Five years ago, delegates and NGOs went to Beijing to right wrongs and promote rights. To show the world that when women suffer injustice, we all suffer; that when women are empowered, we are all better off. The conference was a success : the result was the Beijing Platform for Action.

Five years later, you have come to New York to review the progress made, and to press for further results.

Undoubtedly, there has been progress.

­ Violence against women is now illegal almost everywhere.

­ There has been worldwide mobilisation against harmful traditional practices such as so-called « honour killings » ­ which I prefer to call « shame killings ».

­ In many countries, new health strategies have saved thousands of women's lives. More couples now use family planning than ever before.

­ And a record number of women have become leaders and decision-makers ­ in Cabinets, in boardrooms, and here at the United Nations.

­ Above all, more countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.

But at the same time, much remains to be done. For instance :

­ In economic terms, the gender divide is still widening. Women earn less, are more often unemployed, and generally are poorer than men. Women's work is still largely part-time, informal, unregulated and unstable. The fact that they have productive as well as reproductive roles is still all too rarely recognized.

­ Most countries have yet to legislate in favour of women's rights to own land and other property.

Already, large numbers of women are engaged in global production, from textiles to data processing. But most of them work in appalling conditions, for near-starvation wages. This will only change when women are making economic decisions ­ as managers, entrepreneurs and employers, labour leaders and employment lawyers ­ and when they are making social and political decisions, as community leaders, negotiators, judges or cabinet ministers.

Already women form the main agricultural labour force, in Africa and many other parts of the world. Yet most of them are still denied the right to credit, land ownership and inheritance. Their labour goes unrecognised and unrewarded. Their needs are not given priority. Their role even in household decision-making is restricted.

Here too education can make the difference, enabling women to champion their sisters' rights to land, to credit, to marketing facilities and technology, and to an equal say in land reform.

Once they are educated and integrated into the workforce, women are better equipped to choose the time they marry and the number of children they have. They and their children can get better nutrition, health care and education. And their example will inspire others, as parents get message that girls are worth investing in ­ at least as much as boys.

Indeed, study after study has confirmed that there is no development strategy more beneficial to society as a whole ­ women and men alike than one which involves women as central players.

I hope that in the course of this century, we will also prove that the best strategy of conflict prevention is to expand the role of women as peacemakers. In the UN itself, we must find ways to appoint more women in peacekeeping and peacemaking-positions.

And that is why, in my Millennium Report, and again at the World Education Forum, I challenged Governments to make girls' education their priority. Indeed, I believe that implementing the Beijing Platform will be crucial to achieving all the Millennium goals I have asked the world's leaders to adopt on behalf of all the world's peoples.

Five years ago, you went to Beijing with a simple statement : « We are not guests on this planet. We belong here. » Five years on, I would venture that we all know this is an understatement. I hope this Session will put the world on notice that not only do women belong on this planet, but that the future of this planet depends on women.

Thank you very much.

BIJLAGE 3

UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

« Women 2000 : Gender Equality, Development

and Peace for the 21st Century »

STATEMENT OF THE EU

By H.E. Maria De Belem Roseira, Minister for Equality of Portugal,

on behalf of the European Union

5 June 2000

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Central and Eastern European Countries associated with the European Union Bulgaria, the Czech republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Associated countries Cyprus and Turkey align themselves with this statement.

Mr. President,

It is a great honour for us to take the floor, on behalf of the European Union, in this Special Session on a topic that is important not only to women, but to the whole of humankind, women and men. Gender equality, sustainable development and peace are fundamental objectives, all of them interlinked, to be achieved in the XXI century. And more than ever, men and women must be full and equal partners in this process.

During the lengthy preparatory process leading to the Special Session, a significant effort has been made to review and assess the progress made in the implementation of the Platform for Action and in identifying further initiatives. According to this review, much has been accomplished, but much remains to be achieved. The Beijing Platform is an ambitious plan of action and we must commit ourselves to its full and accelerated implementation, as a requirement of justice, of democracy and of full realisation of human rights.

The promotion, protection and full enjoyment of all human rights is central to the framework of the Beijing Platform for Action and to the Outcome Document of this Special Session. It is also a prerequisite for gender equality and the advancement of women and a common basis for addressing the twelve critical areas of concern considered in Beijing. We underline the significance for women of the international human rights instruments, in particular the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The EU welcomes the adoption of the Optional Protocol to CEDAW by the UN General Assembly, allowing for a right to petition and an inquiry procedure under the Convention. This is a fundamental instrument for improving the effective implementation of CEDAW and its entry into force at an early date is of paramount importance. We are hopeful that a large number of States will be able to ratify it as soon as possible.

When we speak of the feminisation of poverty, it is a human rights issue we are speaking of : a civil and political rights issue, as well as an economic, social and cultural rights issue. When we speak of violence against women, physical, psychological or sexual, at home or on the street, it is human rights we are speaking of. When we speak of the exclusion of women from political power or from peace processes it is a human rights issue we are speaking of. States must shoulder their obligation to end violations of women's human rights and to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by women of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

It must be perfectly clear that States have an obligation to fully respect the principles of good governance, take legal, administrative and other measures to protect and promote the human rights of all, women and men. Unless and until States accept and act on this obligation we will not be able to progress. Full implementation of the Platform for Action, therefore, requires the political will to carry forward this comprehensive vision of human rights as the basis for all actions. Human rights are universal and must be enjoyed by women and men on equal terms, as a matter of justice and development, as well as a requirement of genuine democracy.

In such a rights-based approach, it is particularly important to respect the full diversity of women, at all stages of the life-cycle ­ childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age ­ and to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, language, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation, disability, socio- economic class or status as indigenous people, migrants, displaced people or refugees. Laws, practices and procedures should be developed, reviewed and implemented to prohibit and eliminate discrimination on such grounds as the EU established in the Amsterdam Treaty.

Mr. President,

We are living in a rapidly changing world. Globalization, as we all know, is a key-factor in this rapid process of change. The world is joined together more closely than ever before ­ by trade, by the revolution in information and communication and by the growth of a global and shared set of values. It is profoundly affecting women's and men's lives; and, as a result of the still prevailing systemic discrimination against women, they have often been particularly affected. However, globalization, while involving challenges, also opens up new perspectives and opportunities for positive developments. It is our common responsibility to minimise possible negative effects and to empower women in their efforts to participate in the globalization process and to grasp and develop the potential gains it offers for sustainable development.

In this process, there are also other positive changes. Although slow and painful, they bring us hope. They are changes, in particular, in relation to women's and men's roles. A greater sharing of the public and private spheres of life is now an increasing reality, as well as a greater solidarity and understanding of the real values of the roles and responsibilities which society has assigned to women and men in the course of history. Roles and responsibilities that have, for too long, been assigned in mutually exclusive ways, leading to inequality and oppression. Equality in rights and sharing of tasks and responsibilities in 11 areas of life, including the area of power and decision-making, these are areas we must concentrate on in the XXI century.

Women and men have to be jointly and deeply involved in this process. They must work together in a new shaping of society, where the rights of both, in the public and private spheres, are fully recognised and where a social reorganisation will allow full reconciliation of both these worlds for women and men.

In this context, the Platform for Action remains the fundamental instrument that leads the way; and the further actions and initiatives adopted in this Special Session will give us new signposts for our way forward.

It is important to fight against specific forms of discrimination, in employment and economic life or in the form of violence or trafficking, or any other form; it is important to fight against any violation of the human rights of women, including their sexual and reproductive rights; it is important to fight for equality in specific areas, such as equal participation in political life and in decision-making or in any other area of life in society. But it is also essential that an integrated approach be adopted, so that the whole environment, we are living in may be conducive to gender equality and to full enjoyment of human rights for all.

Such an approach has consequences and effects on policies. Not only in theory, but also in practice. This is the reason why one of our priorities is to turn rights into practice. We have said it before, we are reaffirming it now. Such approach also requires that a dual approach, including specific actions and a strategy of gender mainstreaming into all policies and programmes be adopted and effectively implemented; and that effective mechanisms for its achievement, including budgetary provisions, are fully developed and utilised.

Setting clear goals and targets, and getting better measures of progress towards achieving them are invaluable tools in helping speed up the process of change. Instruments for gender impact assessment, statistics disaggregated by sex and age, common quantitative and qualitative indicators and data to measure progress, the development and use of these and other tools are priorities for the future. We, as governments, are primarily responsible for the advancement of this process and will be held accountable for the progress towards gender equality.

It is also imperative to involve all actors of society in the implementation of the Platform for Action. Men and women in general, governments and civil society, including the private sector, social partners, non-governmental organisations, international, regional, national and local institutions. We must all work together, in a global partnership, bringing our skills and resources together to achieve our common purpose.

Mr. President,

To conclude, we would say that particularly in the two last decades of the XX century, we have advanced on the road to equality. We must further pursue this road and be faithful to the inspiration of Beijing.

At the occasion of this Special Session it is, therefore, our duty that we fully commit ourselves to the task of fully achieving the objective of building gender equality. It is not just as a matter of fairness and justice to women, that it certainly is, but above all, as a matter of democracy and of human rights for all, women and men.

It is a great pleasure for me to address this special session of the General Assembly on behalf of the European Community, which fully supports the statement of the European Union, delivered by the Portuguese Presidency.

1. Attitude to conference, progress in EU

Over the last few days, we have seen a renewal of the commitments that were made five years ago in Beijing. The European Community welcomes this reaffirmation of the goals set out in the Platform for Action. We strongly support the three principles, which underlie the Platform for Action : the recognition that women's rights are human rights, the empowerment of women and the gender mainstreaming approach.

The point now is to act. The real value of this special session derives from the discussion and formulation of policies, strategies and practical measures that will bring us closer to gender equality.

The struggle for equality is an ongoing one, requiring a sustained political effort over a period of decades. That is why gender equality has now been enshrined into the EU Treaty, as a fundamental goal. Woman's rights are human rights and all policies must be designed to protect and promote them.

Over the last twenty years, the European Union experienced both deepening and further integration guided by the principles of democracy. Today we are preparing for enlargement. And all this in the context of increased globalisation. The effects have been positive. The deepening of the Union has fostered the exchange of good practice between the Member States and the networking and co-operation between governments and civil society. Our past equality programmes have helped develop these good practices and exchanges. Moreover, a wide body of legalislation firmly established gender equality and rights as key principles of our democracy. Gender equality is integrated in the Community's development cooperation and human rights policies.

The European Commission, just a few days ago, reaffirmed its political commitment by adopting a new framework strategy for gender equality, with implications for every area of Commission policy. It also put forward a programme specifically designed to support gender mainstreaming over the next five years. Thus, we now have a comprehensive overarching strategy, built around common goals, benchmarks and indicators, as well as reinforced co-operation between the different parts of the European Commission. The Beijing process has contributed greatly to the development of our new strategy. Its long-term success will depend, ultimately, on the continued involvement of all stakeholders, including governments, social partners and civil society.

2. The paradox of modernity

The European Community's activities extend well beyond the Member States of the European Union; there are strong links around the globe-through trade and development cooperation policies, for instance. All regions, Europe included, are feeling the positive and negative effects of globalisation. The new technologies and the new e-economy demand new policies and co-operation at global level. The changing world, as well as our response to it, have an effect on gender equality.

Listening to the proceedings over the past few days, I have noticed that these changes contain a paradox ­ a paradox that we will have to address back in our respective regions and countries. Let me explain.

The past decade has seen astonishing advances in science and technology, in health care, in informationprocessing and communications technology. These developments offer an enormous potential for improving our economic, social and physical well-being. In short, these trends hold out a vision of a truly modern, prosperous and civilised society.

Yet even in those parts of the globe where the benefits are already being felt, for many more women than men these remain as resolutely out of reach as ever.

The paradox is that, at the dawn of the 21st century, millions of women around the globe ­ in the EU too ­ are trapped in situations that would have been all too familiar two hundred years ago. A whole generation of women is currently deprived from the enjoyment of their fundamental human rights and suffers the indignities of the misunderstood religious fundamentalism such as it is practiced by the Taliban.

Women and girls continue to be trafficked. The number of women trafficked into the EU has grown much worse, over the past ten years. This type of trafficking takes extensive advantage of the new communication technologies. The ultimate irony being that the perpetrators are the ones to benefit from the trappings of modernity.

3. Governance

Much of the responsibility for addressing and redressing the old and new forms of discrimination lies with governments, regional and international institutions. The fundamental question asked here is what more could they do ? Most of the answers put forward over the past few days have centered on policies. But I would like to conclude with a few words about the wider structural problem of political decision-making and governance.

Good governance as excercised by national and international bodies means more than good policies; it is about the relationship between governments and their citizens, and how government structures affect that relationship.

Equal representation is a key issue here. The participation of women in political and civil life is fundamental to good governance. Women's voices are still not being heard in major policy areas. Structural changes are required to make them audible. Institution-building to meet the challenges of globalisation must be accompanied by equal and shared participation of women in all political processes.

The European Community is prepared to assist the Member States of the EU to fulfil their commitments to building new and better channels of communication between policy-makers and women.

Honourable Chairperson, Distinguished delegates,

Over the last few days, questions have been raised about the usefulness of the plus 5 process of evaluation ­ not only in terms of time constraints ­ but also about the possibility of creating potential new problems. I think we can agree that a review process constitutes a strong incentive and a way forward for women's empowerment. However, two conditions must be met : we must never go below the Beijing Platform for Action and focus our energies on supporting women who suffer most.

This Special Session must be considered a milestone by national and international decision-makers and institutions as the way forward to realising gender equality by placing it at the heart of democracy and sustainable development. What is more, we must ensure that the young generation of women can reap the benefits of globalisation ­ for that we need to work with them to empower them. An agreement such as this in a globalised society mean hope for the new generations of women and men.

BIJLAGE 6

UNITED NATIONS

Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole

of the twenty-third special session

of the General Assembly

General Assembly

Official Records

Twenty-third special session

Supplement No. 3 (A/S-23/10/Rev.1)

New York, 2000

Note

Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures. Mention of such a symbol indicates a reference to a United Nations document.

CHAPTER I

Introduction

1. At the 1st plenary meeting of its twenty-third special session, on 5 June 2000, the General Assembly established an Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole of the twenty-third special session and elected Ms. Christine Kapalata (United Republic of Tanzania) Chairperson by acclamation.

2. The Ad Hoc Committee held 3 meetings, on 5, 9 and 10 June 2000, to hear representatives of the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations and to consider the question of the review and appraisal of progress made in the implementation of the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action (agenda item 8) and the question of further actions and initiatives for overcoming obstacles to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (agenda item 9).

4. In connection with its consideration of agenda items 8 and 9, the Ad Hoc Committee had before it the report of the Commission on the Status of Women acting as the preparatory committee for the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled « Women 2000 : gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century », on its third and resumed third sessions (A/S-23/2 and Add.1 and 2 (Parts I-IV and IV/Corr. 1)).

5. At the 1st meeting, the Chairperson made a statement.

6. A statement was also made by the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women.

7. At the same meeting, the representative of Mauritius made a statement on behalf of the Southern African Development Community.

8. Also at the 1st meeting, statements were made by the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the Regional Manager of the World Food Programme, the Director of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, the Deputy Representative of the New York Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention and the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

9. At the same meeting, statements were made by the Director of the Human Resources Department of the International Monetary Fund, the Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Special Representative of the Director-General of the International Labour Organization and the Assistant Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

10. A statement was also made by the representative of the All India Women's Conference, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, who spoke on behalf of a number of non-governmental organizations.

11. At the 2nd meeting, on 9 June, statements were made by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Executive Secretary of the
Economic Commission for Europe and the representatives of the World Bank, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

12. Statements were also made by the representatives of the following non-governmental organizations accredited to the special session. Caucus on violence against women; Uprooted women's caucus; Asia Pacific Women's Watch; Media caucus; NGO Committee on Mental Health, International Network of Girls and World Vision; Agence de recherches d'information et de formation pour les fernmes; International Self-Reliance Agency for Women; Soroptimist International (on behalf of a number of NG0s); World Association of Community Radio Broadcast; and African Women's Development Network.

CHAPTER II

Action taken by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole

13. At its 3rd meeting, on 10 June, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole considered its draft report (A/S-23/AC.1/L.1 and Add.1-42) and two draft resolutions submitted by the Chairperson in document A/S-23/AC. 1/L.2.

14. Statements were made by the representatives of Honduras, Colombia (also on behalf of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela), Gabon, Cuba, Mauritania, Nigeria (on behalf of the States Members of the United Nations that are members of the Group of 77 and China), the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nicaragua, the Sudan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Canada (on behalf of Juscanz), Argentina, Iraq, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia.

15. The Ad Hoc Committee then adopted its report and recommended that the General Assembly adopt the two draft resolutions to which were annexed, respectively, the texts entitled « Political declaration » and « Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action » (see para. 16 below).

CHAPTER III

Recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole

16. The Ad Hoc Committee recommends to the General Assembly the adoption of the following draft resolutions :

Draft resolution I

Political declaration

The General Assembly,

Adopts the political declaration annexed to the present resolution.

Annex

Political declaration

We the Governments participating in the special session of the General Assembly,

1. Reaffirm our commitment to the goals and objectives contained in the Beijing Declaration (36) and Platform for Action (37), adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women, and the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (38) to the year 2000 as the culmination of the United Nations Decade for Women, 1976 to 1985;

2. Also reaffirm our commitment to the implementation of the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action, which are women and poverty, education and training of women, women and health, violence against women, women and armed conflict, women and the economy, women in power and decisionmaking, institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women, human rights of women, women and the media, women and the environment, and the girl child; and call for the imple­­­­­­

mentation of the agreed conclusions and resolutions on the follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women adopted by the Commission on the Status of Women since the thirty-ninth session of the Commission;

3. Recognize that we have primary responsibility for the full implementation of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and all the relevant commitments for the advancement of women, and, in this connection, call for continued international cooperation including the reaffirmation to strive to fulfil the yet-to-be-attained internationally agreed target of 0.7 per cent of the gross national product of developed countries for overall official development assistance as soon as possible;

4. Welcome the progress made thus far towards gender equality and the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and reaffirm our commitment to accelerate the achievement of universal ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (39) and in this regard acknowledge the efforts at all levels of Governments, the United Nations system, and intergovernmental, other international and regional organizations and urge continued efforts for the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action;

5. Recognize the role and contribution of civil society, in particular non-governmental organizations and women's organizations, in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and encourage their participation in further implementation and assessment processes;

6. Emphasize that men must involve themselves and take joint responsibility with women for the promotion of gender equality;

7. Reaffirm the importance of mainstreaming a gender perspective in the process of implementation of the outcome of other major United Nations conferences and summits and the need for a coordinated follow-up to all major conferences and summits by Governments, regional organizations, and all of the bodies and organizations of the United Nations system within their respective mandates.

We the Governments at the beginning of the new millennium,

8. Reaffirm our commitment to overcoming obstacles encountered in the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies and to strengthening and safeguarding a national and international enabling environment, and to this end pledge to undertake further action to ensure their full and accelerated implementation, inter alia, through the promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes and promoting women's full participation and empowerment and enhanced international cooperation for the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action;

9. Agree to regularly assess further implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action with a view to bringing together all parties involved in 2005 to assess progress and consider new initiatives, as appropriate, 10 years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action and 20 years after the adoption of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies;

10. Pledge to ensure the realization of societies in which both women and men work together towards a world where every individual can enjoy equality, development and peace in the twenty-first century.

Draft resolution II

Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The General Assembly,

Adopts the further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration (40) and Platform for Action (41) annexed to the present resolution.

Annex

Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

I. Introduction

1. The Governments which came together at the special session of the General Assembly have reaffirmed their commitment to the goals and objectives contained in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for ­­­­­­

Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 as contained in the report of the Conference. The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action set as goals gender equality, development and peace and constituted an agenda for the empowerment of women. The Governments reviewed and appraised progress and identified obstacles and current challenges in the implementation of the Platform for Action. They recognized that the goals and commitments made in the Platform for Action have not been fully implemented and achieved, and have agreed upon further actions and initiatives at the local, national, regional and international levels to accelerate its implementation and to ensure that commitments for gender equality, development and peace are fully realized.

2. The Beijing Platform for Action identified 12 critical areas for priority action to achieve the advancement and empowerment of women. The Commission on the Status of Women has reviewed progress in each of the 12 critical areas of concern and since 1996 has adopted agreed conclusions and recommendations for accelerated implementation. The Platform for Action, together with these agreed conclusions and recommendations, forms the basis for further progress towards the achievement of gender equality, development and peace in the twenty-first Century.

3. The objective of the Platform for Action, which is in full conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, is the empowerment of all women. The full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women is essential for the empowerment of women. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The implementation of the Platform, including through national laws and the formulation of strategies, policies, programmes and development priorities, is the sovereign responsibility of each State, in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the significance of and full respect for various religious and ethical values, cultural backgrounds and philosophical convictions of individuals and their communities should contribute to the full enjoyment by women of their human rights and the achievement of equality, development and peace.

4. The Platform for Action emphasizes that women share common concerns that can only be addressed by working together and in partnership with men towards the common goal of gender equality around the world. It respects and values the full diversity of women's situations and conditions and recognizes that some women face particular barriers to their empowerment.

5. The Platform for Action recognizes that women face barriers to full equality and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion or disability, because they are indigenous women or of other status. Many women encounter specific obstacles related to their family status, particularly as single parents; and to their socio-economic status, including their living conditions in rural, isolated or impoverished areas. Additional barriers also exist for refugee women, other displaced women, including internally displaced women, as well as for immigrant women and migrant women, including women migrant workers. Many women are also particularly affected by environmental disasters, serious and infectious diseases and various forms of violence against women.

II. Achievements in and obstacles to the implementation of the 12 critical areas of the Platform for Action

6. Assessment of achievements and obstacles must be made in relation to the commitments made in the Beijing Platform for Action and its 12 critical areas, namely by looking into the actions taken and the results attained, as indicated in national reports as well as taking note of the reports of the Secretary-General and of the results, conclusions and agreements of the five regional meetings held in preparation for the special session of the General Assembly and other relevant sources. Such assessment shows that, even though significant positive developments can be identified, barriers remain and there is still the need to further implement the goals and commitments made in Beijing. The summary of achievements and of persistent or new obstacles can therefore constitute a global framework for the identification of further actions and initiatives to overcome obstacles and to achieve the full and accelerated implementation of the Platform for Action at all levels and in all areas.

A. Women and poverty

7. Achievements. Considerable progress has been achieved in increasing recognition of gender dimensions of poverty and in the recognition that gender equality is one of the factors of specific importance for eradicating poverty particularly in relation to the feminization of poverty. Efforts have been made to integrate a gender perspective into poverty eradication policies and programmes by Governments, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations. Multilateral, international and regional financial institutions are also giving increased attention to the incorporation of a gender perspective into their policies. Progress has been made by pursuing a two-pronged approach of promoting employment and income-generating activities for women and providing access to basic social services, including education and health care. Microcredit and other financial instruments for women have emerged as a successful strategy for economic empowerment and have widened economic opportunities for some women living in poverty in particular in rural areas. Policy development has taken account of the particular needs of female-headed households. Research has enhanced the understanding of the differing impacts of poverty on women and men and tools have been developed to assist with this assessment.

8. Obstacles. Many factors have contributed to widening economic inequality between women and men, including income inequality, unemployment and deepening of poverty levels of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups. Debt burdens, excessive military spending, inconsistent with national security requirements, unilateral coercive measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations, armed conflict, foreign occupation, terrorism, low levels of official development assistance and the unfulfilled commitment to strive to fulfil the yet to be attained internationally agreed target of 0.7 per cent of the gross national product of developed countries for overall official development assistance and 0.15 to 0.2 per cent for the least developed countries, as well as the lack of efficient use of resources, among other factors, can constrain national efforts to combat poverty. In addition, gender inequalities and disparities in economic power-sharing, unequal distribution of unremunerated work between women and men, lack of technological and financial support for women's entrepreneurship, unequal access to, and control over, capital, particularly land and credit and access to labour markets, as well as all harmful, traditional and customary practices, have constrained women's economic empowerment and exacerbated the feminization of poverty. Fundamental economic restructuring experienced by the countries with economies in transition has led to lack of resources for poverty-eradication programmes aimed at empowerment of women.

B. Education and training of women

9. Achievements. There is an increased awareness that education is one of the most valuable means of achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women. Progress was achieved in women's and girls' education and training at all levels, especially where there was sufficient political commitment and resource allocation. Measures were taken in all regions to initiate alternative education and training systems to reach women and girls in indigenous communities and other disadvantaged and marginalized groups to encourage them to pursue all fields of study, in particular non-traditional fields of study, and to remove gender biases from education and training.

10. Obstacles. In some countries, efforts to eradicate illiteracy and strengthen literacy among women and girls and to increase their access to all levels and types of education were constrained by the lack of resources and insufficient political will and commitment to improve educational infrastructure and undertake educational reforms; persisting gender discrimination and bias, including in teacher training; gender-based occupational stereotyping in schools, institutions of further education and communities; lack of childcare facilities; persistent use of gender stereotypes in educational materials; and insufficient attention paid to the link between women's enrolment in higher educational institutions and labour market dynamics. The remote location of some communities and, in some cases, inadequate salaries and benefits make attracting and retaining teaching professionals difficult and can result in lower quality education. Additionally, in a number of countries, economic, social and infrastructural barriers, as well as traditional discriminatory practices, have contributed to lower enrolment and retention rates for girls. Little progress has been made in eradicating illiteracy in some developing countries, aggravating women's inequality at the economic, social and political levels. In some of these countries, the inappropriate design and application of structural adjustment policies has had a particularly severe impact on the education sector since they resulted in declining investment in education infrastructure.

C. Women and health

11. Achievements. Programmes have been implemented to create awareness among policy makers and planners of the need for health programmes to cover all aspects of women's health throughout women's life cycle, which have contributed to an increase in life expectancy in many countries. There is : increased attention to high mortality rates among women and girls as a result of malaria, tuberculosis, water-borne diseases, communicable and diarrhoeal diseases and malnutrition; increased attention to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights of women as contained in paragraphs 94 and 95 of the Platform for Action, as well as in some countries increased emphasis on implementing paragraph 96 of the Platform for Action; increased knowledge and use of family planning and contraceptive methods as well as increased awareness among men of their responsibility in family planning and contraceptive methods and their use; increased attention to sexually transmitted infections, including human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) among women and girls and methods to protect against such infections; increased attention to breastfeeding, nutrition, infants' and mothers' health; the introduction of a gender perspective in health and health-related educational and physical activities, and gender-specific prevention and rehabilitation programmes on substance abuse, including tobacco, drugs and alcohol; increased attention to women's mental health, health conditions at work, environmental considerations and recognition of the specific health needs of older women. At its twenty-first special session, held in New York from 30 June to 2 July 1999, the General Assembly reviewed achievements and adopted key actions (42) in the field of women's health for further implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) (43).

12. Obstacles. Worldwide, the gap between and within rich and poor countries with respect to infant mortality and maternal mortality and morbidity rates, as well as with respect to measures addressing the health of women and girls, given their special vulnerability regarding sexually transmitted infections, including human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and other sexual and reproductive health problems, together with endemic, infectious and communicable diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal and water-borne diseases and chronic non-transmissible diseases, remains unacceptable. In some countries, such endemic, infectious and communicable diseases continue to take a toll on women and girls. In other countries, non-communicable diseases, such as cardio/pulmonary diseases, hypertension and degenerative diseases, remain among the major causes of mortality and morbidity among women. Despite progress in some countries, the rates of maternal mortality and morbidity remain unacceptably high in most countries. Investment in essential obstetric care remains insufficient in many countries. The absence of a holistic approach to health and health care for women and girls based on women's right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health throughout the life cycle has constrained progress. Some women continue to encounter barriers to their right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The predominant focus of health-care systems on treating illness rather than maintaining optimal health also prevents a holistic approach. There is, in some countries, insufficient attention to the role of social and economic determinants of health. A lack of access to clean water, adequate nutrition, safe sanitation, of gender-specific health research and technology, insufficient gender sensitivity in the provision of health information and health care and health services, including those related to environmental and occupational health hazards, affect women in developing and developed countries. Poverty and the lack of development continue to affect the capacity of many developing countries to provide and expand quality health care. A shortage of financial and human resources, in particular in developing countries, as well as restructuring of the health sector and/or the increasing trend to privatization of health-care systems in some cases, has resulted in poor quality, reduced and insufficient health-care services, and has also led to less attention to the health of the most vulnerable groups of women. Such obstacles as unequal power relationships between women and men, in which women often do not have the power to insist on safe and responsible sex practices, and a lack of communication and understanding between men and women on women's health needs, inter alia, endanger women's health, particularly by increasing their susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, and affect women's access to health care and education, especially in relation to prevention. Adolescents, particularly adolescent girls, continue to lack access to sexual and reproductive health information, education and services. Women who are recipients of health care are frequently not treated with respect nor guaranteed privacy and confidentiality, and do not receive full information about options and services available. In some cases, health services and workers still do not conform to human rights and to ethical, professional and gender-sensitive standards in the delivery of women's health services, nor do they ensure responsible, voluntary and informed consent. There continues to be a lack of information on availability and access to appropriate, affordable, primary healthcare services of high quality, including sexual and reproductive health care, sufficient attention to maternal and emergency obstetric care as well as a lack of prevention, screening and treatment for breast, cervical and ovarian cancers and osteoporosis. The testing and development of male contraceptives is still insufficient. While some measures have been taken in some countries, the actions contained in paragraphs 106 (j) and 106 (k) of the Platform for Action regarding the health impact of unsafe abortion and the need to reduce the recourse to abortion have not been fully implemented. The rising incidence of tobacco use among women, particularly young women, has increased their risk of cancer and other serious diseases, as well as gender-specific risks from tobacco and environmental tobacco smoke.

D. Violence against women

13. Achievements. It is widely accepted that violence against women and girls, whether occurring in public or private life, is a human rights issue. It is accepted that violence against women, where perpetrated or condoned by the State or its agents, constitutes a human rights violation. It is also accepted that States have an obligation to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish acts of violence, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons, and provide protection to victims. There is increased awareness of and commitment to preventing and combating violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, which violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, through, inter alia, improved legislation, policies and programmes. Governments have initiated policy reforms and mechanisms, such as interdepartmental committees, guidelines and protocols, national, multidisciplinary and coordinated programmes to address violence. Some Governments have also introduced or reformed laws to protect women and girls from all forms of violence and laws to prosecute the perpetrators. There is an increasing recognition at all levels that all forms of violence against women seriously affect their health. Healthcare providers are seen to have a significant role to play in addressing this matter. Some progress has been made in the provision of services for abused women and children, including legal services, shelters, special health services and counselling, hotlines and police units with special training. Education for law enforcement personnel, members of the judiciary, health-care providers and welfare workers is being promoted. Educational materials for women and public awareness campaigns have been developed as well as research on the root causes of violence. Research into and specialized studies on gender roles are increasing, in particular on men's and boys' roles, and all forms of violence against women, as well as on the situation of and impact on children growing up in families where violence occurs. Successful cooperation has been achieved between governmental and non-governmental organizations in the field of preventing violence against women. The
active support of civil society, in particular women's organizations and NGOs, has had an important role, inter alia, in promoting awareness-raising campaigns and in the provision of support services to women victims of violence. Efforts towards the eradication of harmful traditional practices, including female genital mutilation, which is a form of violence against women, have received national, regional and international policy support. Many Governments have introduced educational and outreach programmes, as well as legislative measures criminalizing these practices. In addition, this support includes the appointment of the Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation by the United Nations Population Fund.

14. Obstacles. Women continue to be victims of various forms of violence. Inadequate understanding of the root causes of all forms of violence against women and girls hinders efforts to eliminate violence against women and girls. There is a lack of comprehensive programmes dealing with the perpetrators, including programmes, where appropriate, which would enable them to solve problems without violence. Inadequate data on violence further impedes informed policy-making and analysis. Sociocultural attitudes which are discriminatory and economic inequalities reinforce women's subordinate place in society. This makes women and girls vulnerable to many forms of violence, such as physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation. In many countries, a coordinated multidisciplinary approach to responding to violence which includes the health system, workplaces, the media, the education system, as well as the justice system, is still limited. Domestic violence, including sexual violence in marriage, is still treated as a private matter in some countries. Insufficient awareness of the consequences of domestic violence, how to prevent it and the rights of victims still exists. Although improving, the legal and legislative measures, especially in the criminal justice area, to eliminate different forms of violence against women and children, including domestic violence and child pornography, are weak in many countries. Prevention strategies also remain fragmented and reactive and there is a lack of programmes on these issues. It is also noted that, in some countries, problems have arisen from the use of new information and communication technologies for trafficking in women and children and for purposes of all forms of economic and sexual exploitation.

E. Women and armed conflict

15. Achievements. There is a wider recognition that armed conflict has different destructive impacts on women and men and that a gender-sensitive approach to the application of international human rights law and international humanitarian law is important. Steps have been taken at the national and international levels to address abuses against women, including increased attention to ending impunity for crimes against women in situations of armed conflict. The work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda has been an important contribution to address violence against women in the context of armed conflict. Also of historical significance is the adoption of the Crime Statute of the International Criminal Court (44), which provides that rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence are war crimes when committed in the context of armed conflict and also under defined circumstances, crimes against humanity. Women's contribution in the areas of peace-building, peacemaking and conflict resolution is being increasingly recognized. Education and training on non-violent conflict resolution have been introduced. Progress has been made on the dissemination and implementation of the guidelines for the protection of refugee women, and on addressing the needs of displaced women. Gender-based persecution has been accepted as a basis for refugee status in some countries. There is recognition by Governments, the international community and organizations, in particular the United Nations, that women and men experience humanitarian emergencies differently, and there is a need for a more holistic support for refugee and displaced women, including those who have suffered all forms of abuse, including gender-specific abuse, to ensure equal access to appropriate and adequate food and nutrition, clean water, safe sanitation, shelter, education, social and health services, including reproductive health care and maternity care. There is greater recognition of the need to integrate a gender perspective in the planning, design and implementation of humanitarian assistance and to provide adequate resources. Humanitarian relief agencies and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, have played an increasingly important role in the provision of humanitarian assistance, as well as in the design, where appropriate, and implementation of programmes to address the needs of women and girls, including refugee and displaced women and girls in humanitarian emergencies, and in conflict and post-conflict situations.

16. Obstacles. Peace is inextricably linked to equality between women and men and development. Armed and other types of conflicts, wars of aggression, foreign occupation, colonial or other alien domination, as well as terrorism, continue to cause serious obstacles to the advancement of women. The targeting of civilians, including women and children, the displacement of people, and the recruitment of child soldiers in violation of national or international law, by State and/or non-State actors, which occur in armed conflicts, have had a particularly adverse impact on gender equality and women's human rights. Armed conflict creates or exacerbates the high level of female-headed households, which in many cases are living in poverty. The underrepresentation, at all levels, of women in decision-making positions, such as special envoys or, special representatives of the Secretary-General, in peacekeeping, peace-building, ­­­­­­

post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction, as well as lack of gender awareness in these areas, presents serious obstacles. There has been a failure to provide sufficient resources, to adequately distribute those resources and to address the needs of increasing numbers of refugees, who are mostly women and children, particularly to developing countries hosting large numbers of refugees; international assistance has not kept pace with the increasing number of refugees. The growing number of internally displaced persons and the provision of their needs, in particular women and children, continue to represent a double burden to the affected countries and their financial resources. Inadequate training of personnel dealing with the needs of women in situations of armed conflict or as refugees, such as a shortage of specific programmes that address the healing of women from trauma and skills training, remains a problem.

17. Excessive military expenditures, including global military expenditures, trade in arms and investment for arms production, taking into consideration national security requirements, direct the possible allocation of funds away from social and economic development, in particular for the advancement of women. In several countries, economic sanctions have had social and humanitarian impacts on the civilian population, in particular women and children.

18. In some countries, advancement of women is adversely affected by unilateral measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that create obstacles to trade relations among States, impede the full realization of social and economic development and hinder the well-being of the population in the affected countries, with particular consequences for women and children.

19. In situations of armed conflict, there are continued violations of human rights of women, which are violations of fundamental principles of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. There has been an increase in all forms of violence against women, including sexual slavery, rape, systematic rape, sexual abuse and forced pregnancies, in situations of armed conflict. Displacement compounded by loss of home and property, poverty, family disintegration and separation and other consequences of armed conflict are severely affecting the populations, especially women and children. Girls are also abducted or recruited, in violation of international law, into situations of armed conflict, including as combatants, sexual slaves or providers of domestic services.

F. Women and the economy

20. Achievements. There is increased participation of women in the labour market and subsequent gain in economic autonomy. Some Governments have introduced a variety of measures that address women's economic and social rights, equal access to and control over economic resources and equality in employment. Other measures include the ratification of international labour conventions as well as enacting or strengthening legislation to make it compatible with these conventions. There is increased awareness of the need to reconcile employment and family responsibilities and the positive effect of such measures as maternity and paternity leave and also parental leave, and child and family care services and benefits. Some Governments have made provisions to address discriminatory and abusive behaviour in the workplace and to prevent unhealthy working conditions, and have established funding mechanisms to promote women's roles in entrepreneurship, education and training, including scientific and technical skills and decision-making. Research has been conducted on barriers to economic empowerment faced by women, including the relationship between remunerated and unremunerated work, and tools are being developed to assist with this assessment.

21. Obstacles. The importance of a gender perspective in the development of macroeconomic policy is still not widely recognized. Many women still work in rural areas and the informal economy as subsistence producers, and in the service sector with low levels of income and little job and social security. Many women with comparable skills and experience are confronted with a gender wage gap and lag behind men in income and career mobility in the formal sector. Equal pay for women and men for equal work, or work of equal value, has not yet been fully realized. Gender discrimination in hiring and promotion and related to pregnancy, including through pregnancy testing, and sexual harassment in the workplace persist, In some countries, women's full and equal rights to own land and other property, including through the right to inheritance, is not recognized yet in national legislation. Progression in the professions, in most cases, is still more difficult for women, due to the lack of structures and measures that take into account maternity and family responsibilities. In some cases, persistent gender stereotyping has led to a lower status of male workers as fathers and to an insufficient encouragement for men to reconcile professional and family responsibilities. Lack of family-friendly policies regarding the organization of work increases these difficulties. Effective implementation of legislation and practical support systems is still inadequate. The combination of remunerated work and caregiving within families, households and communities still leads to a disproportionate burden for women as long as there is insufficient sharing of tasks and responsibilities by men. It is still also women who perform the larger part of unremunerated work.

G. Women in power and decision-making

22. Achievements. There has been growing acceptance of the importance to society of the full participation of women in decision-making and power at all levels and in all forums, including the
intergovernmental, governmental and non-governmental sectors. In some countries, women have also attained higher positions in these spheres. An increasing number of countries applied affirmative and positive action policies, including quota systems or voluntary agreements in some countries and measurable goals and targets, developed training programmes for women's leadership, and introduced measures to reconcile family and work responsibilities of both women and men. National mechanisms and machineries for the advancement of women as well as national and international networks of women politicians, parliamentarians, activists and professionals in various fields have been established or upgraded and strengthened.

23. Obstacles. Despite general acceptance of the need for a gender balance in decision-making bodies at all levels, a gap between de jure and de facto equality has persisted. Notwithstanding substantial improvement of de jure equality between women and men, the actual participation of women at the highest levels of national and international decision-making has not significantly changed since the time of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, and gross underrepresentation of women in decision-making bodies in all areas, including politics, conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms, the economy, the environment and the media, hinders the inclusion of a gender perspective in these critical spheres of influence. Women continue to be underrepresented at the legislative, ministerial and subministerial levels, as well as at the highest levels of the corporate sector and other economic and social institutions. Traditionally assigned gender roles limit women's choices in education and careers and compel women to assume the burden for household responsibilities. Initiatives and programmes aimed at women's increased participation in decision-making were hindered by a lack of human and financial resources for training and advocacy for political careers; gender-sensitive attitudes towards women in society, awareness of women to engage in decision-making in some cases; accountability of elected officials and political parties for promoting gender equality and women's participation in public life; social awareness of the importance of balanced participation of women and men in decision-making; willingness on the part of men to share power; sufficient dialogue and cooperation with women's NGOs, along with organizational and political structures, which enable all women to participate in all spheres of political decision-making.

H. Institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women

24. Achievements. National machineries have been instituted or strengthened and recognized as the institutional base acting as « catalysts » for promoting gender equality, gender mainstreaming and monitoring of the implementation of the Platform for Action and in many instances of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (45). In many countries, progress has been achieved in terms of the visibility, status, outreach and coordination of activities of these machineries. Gender mainstreaming has been widely acknowledged as a strategy to enhance the impact of policies to promote gender equality. The goal of the strategy is to incorporate a gender perspective in all legislation policies, programmes and projects. These machineries, despite their limited financial resources, have made a significant contribution to the development of human resources in the field of gender studies and have also contributed to the growing efforts for the generation and dissemination of data disaggregated by sex and age, gender-sensitive research and documentation. Within the United Nations system, much progress has been made in the mainstreaming of a gender perspective, including through the development of tools and the creation of gender focal points.

25. Obstacles. In a number of countries, inadequate financial and human resources and a lack of political will and commitment are the main obstacles confronting national machineries. This is further exacerbated by insufficient understanding of gender equality and gender mainstreaming among government structures, as well as prevailing gender stereotypes, discriminatory attitudes, competing government priorities and, in some countries, unclear mandates, a marginalized location within the national government structures, lack of data disaggregated by sex and age in many areas and insufficiently applied methods for assessing progress, in addition to paucity of authority and insufficient links to civil society. The activities of the national machineries were also hindered by structural and communication problems within and among government agencies.

1. Human rights of women

26. Achievements. Legal reforms have been undertaken to prohibit all forms of discrimination and discriminatory provisions have been eliminated in civil, penal and personal status law governing marriage and family relations, all forms of violence, women's property and ownership rights and women's political, work and employment rights. Steps have been taken to realize women's de facto enjoyment of their human rights through the creation of an enabling environment, including the adoption of policy measures, the improvement of enforcement and monitoring mechanisms and the implementation of legal literacy and awareness campaigns at all levels. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women has been ratified or acceded to by 165 countries and its full ­­­­­­

implementation has been promoted by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. At its fifty-fourth session, the General Assembly adopted the Optional Protocol to the Convention (46), allowing women claiming to be victims of a violation of any of the rights set forth in the Convention by a State party to submit their claims to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, to which non-governmental organizations contributed by raising awareness and generating support for its adoption. Women's NGOs have also contributed to raising awareness that women's rights are human rights. They also generated support for the inclusion of a gender perspective in the elaboration of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Progress has also been made to integrate the human rights of women and mainstream a gender perspective into the United Nations system, including into the work of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and of the Commission on Human Rights.

27. Obstacles. Gender discrimination and all other forms of discrimination, in particular racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance continue to cause threat to women's enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. In situations of armed conflict and foreign occupation, human rights of women have been extensively violated. Even though a number of countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the goal of universal ratification by the year 2000 has not been achieved, and there continue to be a large number of reservations to the Convention. While there is an increasing acceptance of gender equality, many countries have not yet implemented fully the provisions of the Convention. Discriminatory legislation as well as harmful traditional and customary practices and negative stereotyping of women and men still persist. Family, civil, penal, labour and commercial laws or codes, or administrative rules and regulations, still have not fully integrated a gender perspective. Legislative and regulatory gaps, as well as lack of implementation and enforcement of legislation and regulations, perpetuate de jure as well as de facto inequality and discrimination, and in a few cases, new laws discriminating against women have been introduced. In many countries, women have insufficient access to the law, resulting from illiteracy, lack of legal literacy, information and resources, insensitivity and gender bias, and lack of awareness of the human rights of women by law enforcement officials and the judiciary, who in many cases fail to respect the human rights of women and the dignity and worth of the human person. There is insufficient recognition of women's and girls' reproductive rights, as well as barriers to their full enjoyment of those rights, which embrace certain human rights as defined in paragraph 95 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Some women and girls continue to encounter barriers to justice and the enjoyment of their human rights because of such factors as their race, language, ethnicity, culture, religion, disability or socio-economic class or because they are indigenous people, migrants, including women migrant workers, displaced women or refugees.

J. Women and the media

28. Achievements. The establishment of local, national and international women's media networks has contributed to global information dissemination, exchange of views and support to women's groups active in media work. The development of information and communication technologies, especially the Internet, has provided improved communication opportunities for the empowerment of women and girls, which has enabled an increasing number of women to contribute to knowledge sharing, networking and electronic commerce activities. The number of women's media organizations and programmes has increased, facilitating the aims of increased participation and promotion of positive portrayals of women in the media. Progress has been made to combat negative images of women by establishing professional guidelines and voluntary codes of conduct, encouraging fair gender portrayal and the use of non-sexist language in media programmes.

29. Obstacles. Negative, violent and/or degrading images of women, including pornography and stereotyped portrayals, have increased in different forms using new communication technologies in some instances, and bias against women remains in the media. Poverty, the lack of access and opportunities, illiteracy, lack of computer literacy and language barriers, prevent some women from using the information and communication technologies, including the Internet. Development of and access to Internet infrastructure is limited, especially in developing countries and particularly for women.

K. Women and the environment

30. Achievements. Some national environment policies and programmes have incorporated gender perspectives. In recognition of the link between gender equality, poverty eradication, sustainable development and environment protection, Governments have included income generating activities for women, as well as training in natural resource management and environmental protection in their development strategies. Projects have been launched to preserve and utilize women's traditional ecological knowledge, including the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous women, in the management of natural resources and the preservation of biodiversity.

31. Obstacles. There is still a lack of public awareness about environmental risks faced by women and of the benefits of gender equality for promoting environmental protection. Women's limited access to ­­­­­­

technical skills, resources and information, in particular in developing countries, due to, inter alia, gender inequality, have impeded women's effective participation in decision-making, regarding the sustainable environment, including at the international level. Research, action, targeted strategies and public awareness remain limited regarding the differential impacts and implications of environmental problems for women and men. Real solutions to environmental problems, including environmental degradation, need to address the root causes of these problems, such as foreign occupation. Environmental policies and programmes lack a gender perspective and fail to take into account women's roles and contributions to environmental sustainability.

L. The girl child

32. Achievements. Some progress was made in primary and, to a lesser extent, secondary and tertiary education for girls, owing to the creation of a more gender-sensitive school environment, improved educational infrastructure, increased enrolment and retention, support mechanisms for pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers, increased non-formal education opportunities and enhanced attendance at science and technology classes. Increased attention was given to the health of the girl child, including the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents. An increasing number of countries introduced legislation to ban female genital mutilation and imposed heavier penalties on those involved in sexual abuse, trafficking and all other forms of exploitation of the girl child, including for commercial ends. A recent achievement has been the adoption of the optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on involvement of children in armed conflict (47) and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (48).

33. Obstacles. The persistence of poverty, discriminatory attitudes towards women and girls, negative cultural attitudes and practices against girls, as well as negative stereotyping of girls and boys, which limits girls' potential, and inadequate awareness of the specific situation of the girl child, child labour and the heavy burden of domestic responsibilities on girls, inadequate nutrition and access to health services, and lack of finance, which often prevent them from pursuing and completing their education and training, have contributed to a lack of opportunities and possibilities for girls to become confident and self-reliant, and independent adults. Poverty, lack of parental support and guidance, lack of information and education, abuse and all forms of exploitation of, and violence against, the girl child in many cases result in unwanted pregnancies and transmission of HIV, which may also lead to a restriction of educational opportunities. Programmes for the girl child were hindered by a lack of or an insufficient allocation of financial and human resources. There were few established national mechanisms to implement policies and programmes for the girl child and, in some cases, coordination among responsible institutions was insufficient. The increased awareness of the health needs, including the sexual and reproductive health needs, of adolescents has not yet resulted in sufficient provision of necessary information and services. Despite advances in legal protection, there is increased sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of the girl child. Adolescents continue to lack the education and service needed to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality.

III. Current challenges affecting the full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action

34. The review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action occurred in a rapidly changing global context. Since 1995, a number of issues have gained prominence and acquired new dimensions which pose additional challenges to the full and accelerated implementation of the Platform in order to realize gender equality, development and peace by Governments, intergovernmental bodies, international organizations, the private sector and non-governmental organizations as appropriate. Continued political commitment to gender equality at all levels is needed for the full implementation of the Platform for Action.

35. Globalization has presented new challenges for the fulfilment of the commitments made and the realization of the goals of the Fourth World Conference on Women. The globalization process has, in some countries, resulted in policy shifts in favour of more open trade and financial flows, privatization of State-owned enterprises and in many cases lower public spending, particularly on social services. This change has transformed patterns of production and accelerated technological advances in information and communication and affected the lives of women, both as workers and consumers. In a large number of countries, particularly in developing and least developed countries, these changes have also adversely impacted on the lives of women and have increased inequality. The gender impact of these changes has not been systematically evaluated. Globalization also has cultural, political and social impacts affecting cultural values, lifestyles and forms of communication as well as implications for the achievement of sustainable development. The benefits of the growing global economy have been unevenly distributed, leading to wider economic disparities, the feminization of poverty, increased gender inequality, including through often deteriorating work conditions and unsafe working environments, especially in the infor­­­­­­

mal economy and rural areas. While globalization has brought greater economic opportunities and autonomy to some women, many others have been marginalized, owing to deepening inequalities among and within countries, by depriving them of the benefits of this process. Although in many countries the level of participation of women in the labour force has risen, in other cases the application of certain economic policies has had such a negative impact that increases in women's employment often have not been matched by improvements in wages, promotions and working conditions. In many cases, women continue to be employed in low-paid part-time and contract jobs marked by insecurity and by safety and health hazards. In many countries, women, especially new entrants into the labour market, continue to be among the first to lose jobs and the last to be rehired.

36. Increasing disparities in the economic situation among and within countries, coupled with a growing economic interdependence and dependence of States on external factors as well as financial crises have, in recent years, altered prospects for growth and caused economic instability in many countries, with a heavy impact on the lives of women. These difficulties have affected the ability of States to provide social protection and social security as well as funding for the implementation of the Platform for Action. Such difficulties are also reflected in the shift of the cost of social protection, social security and other welfare provisions from the public sector to the household. The decreasing levels of funding available through international cooperation has contributed to further marginalization of a large number of developing countries and countries with economies in transition within which women are among the poorest. The agreed target of 0.7 per cent of the gross national product of developed countries for overall official development assistance has not been achieved. These factors have contributed to the increasing feminization of poverty, which has undermined efforts to achieve gender equality. Limited funding at the State level makes it imperative that innovative approaches to the allocation of existing resources be employed, not only by Governments but also by NGOs and the private sector. One such innovation is the gender analysis of public budgets, which is emerging as an important tool for determining the differential impact of expenditures on women and men to help ensure equitable use of existing resources. This analysis is crucial to promote gender equality.

37. The impact of globalization and structural adjustment programmes, the high costs of external debt servicing and declining terms of international trade in several developing countries have worsened the existing obstacles to development, aggravating the feminization of poverty. Negative consequences of structural adjustment programmes, stemming from inappropriate design and application, have continued to place a disproportionate burden on women, inter alia, through budget cuts in basic social services, including education and health.

38. There is a greater acceptance that the increasing debt burden faced by most developing countries is unsustainable and constitutes one of the principal obstacles to achieving progress in people-centred sustainable development and poverty eradication. For many developing countries, as well as countries with economies in transition, excessive debt servicing has severely constrained their capacity to promote social development and provide basic services and has affected full implementation of the Platform for Action.

39. In countries with economies in transition, women are bearing most of the hardships induced by the economic restructuring and are the first to lose jobs in times of recession. They are being squeezed out from fast-growth sectors. Loss of childcare facilities due to elimination or privatization of State work places, increased need for older care without the corresponding facilities and continuing inequality of access to training for finding re-employment and to productive assets for entering or expanding businesses are current challenges facing women in these countries.

40. Science and technology, as fundamental components of development, are transforming patterns of production, contributing to the creation of jobs and new job classifications, and ways of working, and contributing to the establishment of a knowledge-based society. Technological change can bring new opportunities for all women in all fields, if they have equal access and adequate training. Women should also be actively involved in the definition, design, development, implementation and gender impact evaluation of policies related to these changes. Many women worldwide are yet to effectively use these new communications technologies for networking, advocacy, exchange of information, business, education, media consultation and e-commerce initiatives. For instance, millions of the world's poorest women and men still do not have access to and benefits from science and technology and are currently excluded from this new field and the opportunities it presents.

41. The patterns of migratory flows of labour are changing. Women and girls are increasingly involved in internal, regional and international labour migration to pursue many occupations, mainly in farm labour, domestic work and some forms of entertainment work. While this situation increases their earning opportunities and self-reliance, it also exposes them, particularly the poor, uneducated, unskilled and/or undocumented migrants, to inadequate working conditions, increased health risk, the risk of trafficking, economic and sexual exploitation, racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, and other forms of abuse, which impair their enjoyment of their human rights and, in some cases, constitute violations of human rights.

42. While recognizing that Governments have the primary responsibility to develop and implement policies to promote gender equality, partnerships between Governments and different actors of civil society are increasingly recognized as an important mechanism to achieve this goal. Additional innovative approaches can be further developed to foster this collaboration.

43. In some countries, current demographic trends, which show that lowered fertility rates, increased life expectancy and lower mortality rates, have contributed to ageing of the population, and increase in
chronic health conditions have implications for health-care systems and spending, informal care systems and research. Given the gap between male and female life expectancy, the number of widows and older single women has increased considerably, often leading to their social isolation and other social challenges. Societies have much to gain from the knowledge and life experience of older women. On the other hand, the current generation of young people is the largest in history. Adolescent girls and young women have particular needs which will require increasing attention.

44. The rapid progression of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly in the developing world, has had a devastating impact on women. Responsible behaviour and gender equality are among the important prerequisites for its prevention. There is also the need for more effective strategies to empower women to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, to protect themselves from high risk and irresponsible behaviour leading to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS and to promote responsible, safe and respectful behaviour by men and to also promote gender equality. HIV/AIDS is an urgent public health issue, is outstripping efforts to contain it and, in many countries, is reversing hard-won gains of development. The burden of care for people living with HIV/AIDS and for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS falls particularly on women as infrastructures are inadequate to respond to the challenges being posed. Women with HIV/AIDS often suffer from discrimination and stigma and are often victims of violence. Issues related to prevention, mother-to-child transmission of HIV, breastfeeding, information and education in particular of youth, curbing high-risk behaviour, intravenous drug users, support groups, counselling and voluntary testing, partner notification and provision and high cost of essential drugs have not been sufficiently addressed. There are positive signs in the fight against HIV/AIDS in some countries that behavioural changes have occurred among young people, and experience shows that educational programmes for young people can lead to a more positive view on gender relations and gender equality, delayed sexual initiation and reduced risk of sexually transmitted infections.

45. Growing drug and substance abuse among young women and girls, both in developed and developing countries, has raised the need for increased efforts towards demand reduction and fight against illicit production, supply and trafficking of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances.

46. The increase in casualties and damage caused by natural disasters has raised awareness of the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the existing approaches and intervention methods in responding to such emergency situations, in which women, more often than men, are burdened with the responsibility of meeting the immediate daily needs of their families. This situation has raised awareness that a gender perspective must be incorporated whenever disaster prevention, mitigation and recovery strategies are being developed and implemented.

47. The changing context of gender relations, as well as the discussion on gender equality, has led to an increased reassessment of gender roles. This has further encouraged a discussion on the roles and responsibilities of women and men working together towards gender equality and the need for changing those stereotypical and traditional roles that limit women's full potential. There is a need for balanced participation between women and men in remunerated and unremunerated work. Failure to recognize and measure in quantitative terms unremunerated work of women, which is often not valued in national accounts, has meant that women's full contribution to social and economic development remains underestimated and undervalued. As long as there is insufficient sharing of tasks and responsibilities with men, the combination of remunerated work and caregiving will lead to the continued disproportionate burden for women in comparison to men.

IV. Actions and initiatives to overcome obstacles and to achieve the full and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action

48. In view of the evaluation of progress made in the five years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, as contained in chapter II above, as well as the current challenges affecting its full realization, as outlined in chapter III above, Governments now recommit themselves to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and also commit themselves to further actions and initiatives to overcome the obstacles and address the challenges. Governments, in taking continued and additional steps to achieve the goals of the Platform, recognize that all human rights ­ civil, cultural, economic, political and social, including the right to development ­ are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, and are essential for realizing gender equality, development and peace in the twenty-first century.

49. Organizations of the United Nations system and the Bretton Woods institutions, as well as the World Trade Organization, other international and regional intergovernmental bodies, parliaments and civil society, including the private sector and NGOs, trade unions and other stakeholders, are called upon to support government efforts and, where appropriate, develop complementary programmes of their own to achieve full and effective implementation of the Platform for Action.

50. Governments and intergovernmental organizations recognize the contribution and complementary role of NGOs, with full respect for their autonomy, in ensuring the effective implementation of the Platform for Action, and should continue to strengthen partnerships with NGOs, particularly women's organizations, in contributing to the effective implementation and follow-up of the Platform for Action.

51. Experience has shown that the goal of gender equality can be fully achieved only in the context of renewed relations among different stakeholders at all levels. The full, effective participation of women on the basis of equality in all spheres of society is necessary to contribute to this goal.

52. Achieving gender equality and empowerment of women requires redressing inequalities between women and men and girls and boys and ensuring their equal rights, responsibilities, opportunities and possibilities. Gender equality implies that women's as well as men's needs, interests, concerns, experiences and priorities are an integral dimension of the design, implementation, national monitoring, and follow-up and evaluation, including at the international level, of all actions in all areas.

53. By adopting the Platform for Action, Governments and the international community agreed to a common development agenda with gender equality and women's empowerment as underlying principles. The efforts towards ensuring women's participation in development have expanded and need to combine a focus on women's conditions and basic needs with a holistic approach based on equal rights and partnerships, promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Policies and programmes should be formulated to achieve the goal of people-centred sustainable development, secure livelihoods and adequate social protection measures, including safety nets, strengthened support systems for families, equal access to and control over financial and economic resources, and to eliminate increasing and disproportionate poverty among women. All economic policies and institutions as well as those responsible for resource allocation should adopt a gender perspective to ensure that development dividends are shared on equal grounds.

54. Recognizing the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women in many countries, particularly in developing countries, it is essential to continue from a gender perspective to review, modify and implement integrated macro-economic and social policies and programmes, including those related to structural adjustment and external debt problems, to ensure universal and equitable access to social services, in particular to education and affordable quality health-care services and equal access to and control over economic resources.

55. Increased efforts are needed to provide equal access to education, health and social services and to ensure women's and girls' rights to education and the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and well-being throughout the life cycle, as well as adequate, affordable and universally accessible health care and services, including sexual and reproductive health, particularly in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; they are also necessary with regard to the growing proportion of older women.

56. Given that a majority of the world's women are subsistence producers and users of environmental resources, there is a need to recognize and integrate women's knowledge and priorities in the conservation and management of such resources to ensure their sustainability. Programmes and infrastructures that are gender-sensitive are needed in order to effectively respond to disaster and emergency situations that threaten the environment, livelihood security, as well as the management of the basic requirements of daily life.

57. Sustaining the livelihoods of populations in States with limited or scarce resources, including small island developing States, is critically dependent on the preservation and protection of the environment. Women's customary knowledge, management and sustainable use of biodiversity should be recognized.

58. Political will and commitment at all levels are crucial to ensure mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the adoption and implementation of comprehensive and action-oriented policies in all areas. Policy commitments are essential for further developing the necessary framework which ensures women's equal access to and control over economic and financial resources, training, services and institutions as well as their participation in decision-making and management. Policy-making processes require the partnership of women and men at all levels. Men and boys should also be actively involved and encouraged in all efforts to achieve the goals of the Platform for Action and its implementation.

59. Violence against women and girls is a major obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of gender equality, development and peace. Violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Gender-based violence, such as battering and other domestic violence, sexual abuse, sexual slavery and exploitation, international trafficking in women and children, forced prostitution and sexual harassment, as well as violence against women resulting from cultural prejudice, racism and racial discrimination, xenophobia, pornography, ethnic cleansing, armed conflict, foreign occupation, religious and anti-religious extremism and terrorism are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and must be combated and eliminated.

60. Women play a critical role in the family. The family is the basic unit of society and is a strong force for social cohesion and integration and, as such, should be strengthened. The inadequate support to women and insufficient protection and support to their respective families affect society as a whole and undermine efforts to achieve gender equality. In different cultural, political and social systems, various forms of the family exist and the rights, capabilities and responsibilities of family members must be respected. Women's social and economic contributions to the welfare of the family and the social significance of maternity and paternity continue to be inadequately addressed. Motherhood and fatherhood and the role of parents and legal guardians in the family and in the upbringing of children and the importance of all family members to the family's well-being are also acknowledged and must not be a basis for discrimination. Women also continue to bear a disproportionate share of the household responsibilities and the care of children, the sick and the elderly. Such imbalance needs to be consistently addressed through appropriate policies and programmes, in particular those geared towards education, and through legislation where appropriate. In order to achieve full partnership, both in public and private
spheres, both women and men must be enabled to reconcile and share equally work responsibilities and family responsibilities.

61. Strong national machineries for the advancement of women and promotion of gender equality require political commitment at the highest level and all necessary human and financial resources to initiate, recommend and facilitate the development, adoption and monitoring of policies, legislation, programmes and capacity-building for the empowerment of women and to act as catalysts for open public dialogue on gender equality as a societal goal. This would enable them to promote the advancement of women and mainstream a gender perspective in policy and programmes in all areas, to play an advocacy role and to ensure equal access to all institutions and resources, as well as enhanced capacity-building for women in all sectors. Reforms to meet the challenges of the changing world are essential to ensure women's equal access to institutions and organizations. Institutional and conceptual changes are a strategic and important aspect of creating an enabling environment for the implementation of the Platform for Action.

62. Programme support to enhance women's opportunities, potentials and activities need to have a dual focus : on the one hand, programmes aimed at meeting the basic as well as the specific needs of women for capacity-building, organizational development and empowerment, and on the other, gender mainstreaming in all programme formulation and implementation activities. It is particularly important to expand into new areas of programming to advance gender equality in response to current challenges.

63. Girls and women of all ages with any form of disability are generally among the more vulnerable and marginalized of society. There is therefore need to take into account and to address their concerns in all policy-making and programming. Special measures are needed at all levels to integrate them into the mainstream of development.

64. Effective and coordinated plans and programmes for the full implementation of the Platform for Action require a clear knowledge of the situation of women and girls, clear research-based knowledge and data disaggregated by sex, short- and long-term time-bound targets and measurable goals, and follow-up mechanisms to assess progress. Efforts are needed to ensure capacity-building for all actors involved in the achievement of these goals. Efforts are also needed at the national level to increase transparency and accountability.

65. The realization and the achievement of the goals of gender equality, development and peace need to be supported by the allocation of necessary human, financial and material resources for specific and targeted activities to ensure gender equality at the local, national, regional and international levels as well as by enhanced and increased international cooperation. Explicit attention to these goals in the budgetary processes at the national, regional and international levels is essential.

A. Actions to be taken at the national level

By Governments :

66. (a) Set and encourage the use of explicit short- and long-term time-bound targets or measurable goals, including, where appropriate, quotas, to promote progress towards gender balance, including women's equal access to and full participation on a basis of equality with men in all areas and at all levels of public life, especially in decision- and policy-making positions, in political parties and political activities, in all government ministries and at key policy-making institutions, as well as in local development bodies and authorities;

(b) Address the barriers faced by women, particularly by indigenous and other marginalized women, in accessing and participating in politics and decision-making, including lack of training, women's double burden of paid and unpaid work, negative societal attitudes and stereotypes.

67. (a) Ensure policies that guarantee equal access to education and elimination of gender disparities in education, including vocational training, science and technology and completion of basic education for girls, especially for those living in rural and deprived areas, and opportunities for continuing education at all levels for all women and girls;

(b) Support the implementation of plans and programmes of action to ensure quality education and improved enrolment retention rates for boys and girls and the elimination of gender discrimination and gender stereotypes in educational curricula and materials, as well as in the process of education;

(c) Accelerate action and strengthen political commitment to close the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005 and to ensure free compulsory and universal primary education for both girls and boys by 2015, as advocated by several global conferences, and eliminate policies that have been proven to worsen and perpetuate the gap;

(d) Develop a gender-sensitive curriculum from kindergarten to elementary schools to vocational training and universities in order to address gender stereotyping as one of the root causes of segregation in working life.

68. (a) Design and implement policies that promote and protect women's enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and create an environment that does not tolerate violations of the rights of women and girls;

(b) Create and maintain a non-discriminatory and gender-sensitive legal environment by reviewing legislation with the view to striving to remove discriminatory provisions as soon as possible, preferably by 2005, and eliminating legislative gaps that leave women and girls without protection of their rights and without effective recourse against gender-based discrimination;

(c) Ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, limit the extent of any reservations to it, and withdraw reservations that are contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention or otherwise incompatible with international treaty law;

(d) Consider signing and ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women;

(e) Consider signing and ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;

(f) Develop, review and implement laws and procedures to prohibit and eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and girls;

(g) Take measures, including programmes and policies, to ensure that maternity, motherhood and parenting and the role of women in procreation are not used as a basis for discrimination nor restrict the full participation of women in society;

(h) Ensure that national legislative and administrative reform processes, including those linked to land reform, decentralization and reorientation of the economy, promote women's rights, particularly those of rural women and women living in poverty, and take measures to promote and implement those rights through women's equal access to and control over economic resources, including land, property rights, right to inheritance, credit and traditional saving schemes, such as women's banks and cooperatives;

(i) Mainstream a gender perspective into national immigration and asylum policies, regulations and practices, as appropriate, in order to promote and protect the rights of all women, including the consideration of steps to recognize gender-related persecution and violence when assessing grounds for granting refugee status and asylum;

(j) Take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination and violence against women and girls by any person, organization or enterprise;

(k) Take necessary measures for the private sector and educational establishments to facilitate and strengthen compliance with non-discriminatory legislation.

69. (a) As a matter of priority, review and revise legislation, were appropriate, with a view to introducing effective legislation, including on violence against women, and take other necessary measures to ensure that all women and girls are protected against all forms of physical, psychological and sexual violence, and are provided recourse to justice;

(b) Prosecute the perpetrators of all forms of violence against women and girls and sentence them appropriately, and introduce actions aimed at helping and motivating perpetrators to break the cycle of violence and take measures to provide avenues for redress to victims;

(c) Treat all forms of violence against women and girls of all ages as a criminal offence punishable by law, including violence based on all forms of discrimination;

(d) Establish legislation and/or strengthen appropriate mechanisms to handle criminal matters relating to all forms of domestic violence, including marital rape and sexual abuse of women and girls, and ensure that such cases are brought to justice swiftly;

(e) Develop, adopt and fully implement laws and other measures, as appropriate, such as policies and educational programmes, to eradicate harmful customary or traditional practices, including female genital mutilation, early and forced marriage and so-called honour crimes, which are violations of the human rights of women and girls and obstacles to the full enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to intensify efforts, in cooperation with local women's groups, to raise collective and individual awareness on how these harmful traditional or customary practices violate women's human rights;

(f) Continue to undertake research to develop a better understanding of the root causes of all forms of violence against women in order to design programmes and take measures towards eliminating those forms of violence;

(g) Take measures to address through policies and programmes, racism and racially motivated violence against women and girls;

(h) Take concrete steps, as a priority and with their full and voluntary participation, to address the impact of violence on indigenous women in order to implement appropriate, effective programmes and services to eliminate all forms of violence;

(i) Promote women's and girls' mental well-being, integrate mental health services into primary health-care systems, develop gender-sensitive supportive programmes and train health workers to recognize gender-based violence and provide care for girls and women of all ages who have experienced any form of violence;

(j) Adopt and promote a holistic approach to respond to all forms of violence and abuse against girls and women of all ages, including girls and women with disabilities, as well as vulnerable and
marginalized women and girls in order to address their diverse needs, including education, provision of appropriate health care and services and basic social services;

(k) Approve and promote a holistic approach to combat violence against women during all their life cycle and circumstances.

70. (a) Take appropriate measures to address the root factors, including external factors, that encourage trafficking in women and girls for prostitution and other forms of commercialized sex, forced marriages and forced tabour in order to eliminate trafficking in women, including by strengthening existing legislations with a view to providing better protection of the rights of women and girls and to punishing the perpetrators, through both criminal and civil measures;

(b) Devise, enforce and strengthen effective measures to combat and eliminate all forms of trafficking in women and girls through a comprehensive antitrafficking strategy consisting of, inter alia, legislative measures, prevention campaigns, information exchange, assistance and protection for and reintegration of the victims and prosecution of all the offenders involved, including intermediaries;

(c) Consider preventing, within the legal framework and in accordance with national policies, victims of trafficking, in particular women and girls, from being prosecuted for their illegal entry or residence, taking into account that they are victims of exploitation;

(d) Consider setting up or strengthening a national coordinating mechanism, for example, a national rapporteur or an inter-agency body, with the participation of civil society, including non-governmental organizations, to encourage the exchange of information and to report on data, root causes, factors and trends in violence against women, in particular trafficking;

(e) Provide protection and support to women and their respective families and develop and strengthen policies to support family security.

71. (a) Consider adopting, where appropriate, national legislation consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity (49) to protect the knowledge, innovations and practices of women in indigenous and local communities relating to traditional medicines, biodiversity and indigenous technologies;

(b) Adapt environmental and agricultural policies and mechanisms, when necessary, to incorporate a gender perspective, and in cooperation with civil society, support farmers, particularly women farmers and those living in rural areas, with education and training programmes.

72. (a) Adopt policies and implement measures to address, on a prioritized basis, the gender aspects of emerging and continued health challenges, such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and other diseases having a disproportionate impact on women's health, including those resulting in the highest mortality and morbidity rates;

(b) Ensure that the reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality is a health sector priority and that women have ready access to essential obstetric care, well-equipped and adequately staffed maternal health-care services, skilled attendance at delivery, emergency obstetric care, effective referral and transport to higher levels of care when necessary, post-partum care and family planning in order to, inter alia, promote safe motherhood, and give priority attention to measures to prevent, detect and treat breast, cervical and ovarian cancer and osteoporosis, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AlDS;

(c) Take measures to meet the unmet needs in good quality family planning services and in contraception, namely regarding the existing gap in services, supplies and use;

(d) Collect and disseminate updated and reliable data on mortality and morbidity of women and conduct further research regarding how social and economic factors affect the health of girls and women of all ages, as well as research about the provision of health-care services to girls and women and the patterns of use of such services and the value of disease prevention and health promotion programmes for women;

(e) Ensure universal and equal access for women and men throughout the life-cycle, to social services related to health care, including education, clean water and safe sanitation, nutrition, food security and health education programmes;

(f) Ensure the provision of safe working conditions for health-care workers;

(g) Adopt, enact, review and revise, where necessary or appropriate, and implement health legislation, policies and programmes, in consultation with women's organizations and other actors of civil society, and allocate the necessary budgetary resources to ensure the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, so that all women have full and equal access to comprehensive, high-quality and affordable health care, information, education and services throughout their life-cycle; reflect the new demands for service and care by women and girls as a result of the HlV/AlDS pandernic and new knowledge about women's needs for specific mental and occupation health programmes and for the ageing process; and protect and promote human rights by ensuring that all health services and workers conform to ethical, ­­­­­­

professional and gender-sensitive standards in the delivery of women's health services, including by establishing or strengthening, as appropriate, regulatory and enforcement mechanisms;

(h) Eliminate discrimination against all women and girls in access to health information, education and health care and health services;

(i) Reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this last condition is the right of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law, and the right of access to appropriate health-care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant. In line with the above definition of reproductive health, reproductive health care is defined as the constellation of methods, techniques and services that contribute to reproductive health and well-being by preventing and solving reproductive health problems. It also includes sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations, and not merely counselling and care related to reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases;

(j) Bearing in mind the above definition, reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents. In the exercise of this right, they should take into account the needs of their living and future children and their responsibilities towards the community. The promotion of the responsible exercise of these rights for all people should be the fundamental basis for government- and community-supported policies and programmes in the area of reproductive health, including family planning. As part of their commitment, full attention should be given to the promotion of mutually respectful and equitable gender relations and particularly to meeting the educational and service needs of adolescents to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality. Reproductive health eludes many of the world's people because of such factors as inadequate levels of knowledge about human sexuality and inappropriate or poor-quality reproductive health information and services; the prevalence of high-risk sexual behaviour; discriminatory social practices; negative attitudes towards women and girls; and the limited power many women and girls have over their sexual and reproductive lives. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because of their lack of information and access to relevant services in most countries. Older women and men have distinct reproductive and sexual health issues which are often inadequately addressed;

(k) The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Equal relationships between women and men in matters of sexual relations and reproduction, including full respect for the integrity of the person, require mutual respect, consent and shared responsibility for sexual behaviour and its consequences;

(l) Design and implement programmes to encourage and enable men to adopt safe and responsible sexual and reproductive behaviour, and to effectively use methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS;

(m) Take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful, medically unnecessary or coercive medical interventions as well as inappropriate medication and overmedication of women and ensure that all women are properly informed of their options, including likely benefits and potential side effects, by properly trained personnel;

(n) Adopt measures to ensure non-discrimination against and respect for the privacy of those living with HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, including women and young people, so that they are not denied the information needed to prevent further transmission of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases and are able to access treatment and care services without fear of stigmatization, discrimination or violence;

(o) In the light of paragraph 8.25 of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, which states :

« In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning, all Governments and relevant intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations are urged to strengthen their commitment to women's health, to deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion (50) as a major public health concern ­­­­­­

and to reduce the recourse to abortion through expanded and improved family-planning services. Prevention of unwanted pregnancies must always be given the highest priority and every attempt should be made to eliminate the need for abortion. Women who have unwanted pregnancies should have ready access to reliable information and compassionate counselling. Any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process. In circumstances where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe. In all cases, women should have access to quality services for the management of complications arising from abortion. Post-abortion counselling, education and family-planning services should be offered promptly, which will also help to avoid repeat abortions. »

(p) Promote and improve comprehensive gender-specific tobacco prevention and control strategies for all women, particularly adolescent girls and pregnant women, which would include education, prevention and cessation programmes and services, and the reduction of people's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and support the development of the World Health Organization international framework convention for tobacco control;

(q) Promote or improve information programmes and measures including treatment for the elimination of the increasing substance abuse among women and adolescent girls, including information campaigns about the risks to health and other consequences and its impact on families.

73. (a) Mainstream a gender perspective into key macroeconomic and social development policies and national development programmes;

(b) Incorporate a gender perspective into the design, development, adoption and execution of all budgetary processes, as appropriate, in order to promote equitable, effective and appropriate resource allocation and establish adequate budgetary allocations to support gender equality and development programmes that enhance women's empowerment and develop the necessary analytical and methodological tools and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation;

(c) Increase, as appropriate, and effectively utilize financial and other resources in the social sector, particularly in education and health, to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment as a central strategy for addressing development and poverty eradication;

(d) Strive to reduce the disproportionate presence of women living in poverty, in particular rural women, by implementing national poverty eradication programmes with a focus on a gender perspective and the empowerment of women, including short- and long-term goals.

74. (a) Undertake socio-economic policies that promote sustainable development and support and ensure poverty eradication programmes, especially for women, by, inter alia, providing skills training, equal access to and control over resources, finance, credit, including microcredit, information and technology, and equal access to markets to benefit women of all ages, in particular those living in poverty and marginalized women, including rural women, indigenous women and female-headed households;

(b) Create and ensure access to social protection systems, taking into account the specific needs of all women living in poverty, demographic changes and changes in society, to provide safeguards against the uncertainties and changes in conditions of work associated with globalization, and strive to ensure that new, flexible and emerging forms of work are adequately covered by social protection;

(c) Continue to review, modify and implement macroeconomic and social policies and programmes, inter alia, through an analysis from a gender perspective of those related to structural adjustment and external debt problems, in order to ensure women's equal access to resources and universal access to basic social services.

75. Facilitate employment for women through, inter alia, promotion of adequate social protection, simplification of administrative procedures, removal of fiscal obstacles, where appropriate, and other measures, such as access to risk capital, credit schemes, microcredit and other funding, facilitating the establishment of microenterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises.

76. (a) Establish or reinforce existing institutional mechanisms at all levels to work with national machineries to strengthen societal support for gender equality, in cooperation with civil society, particularly women's NGOs;

(b) Take action at the highest levels for the continued advancement of women, in particular by strengthening national machineries to mainstream the gender perspective to accelerate the empowerment of women in all areas and to ensure commitment to gender equality policies;

(c) Provide national machineries with the necessary human and financial resources, including through exploring innovative funding schemes, so that gender mainstreaming is integrated into all policies, programmes and projects;

(e) Strengthen efforts to fully implement national action plans developed for the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and, when necessary, adjust or develop national plans for the future;

(f) Ensure that the design of all government information policies and strategies is gender-sensitive.

77. (a) Provide national statistical offices with institutional and financial support in order to collect, compile and disseminate data disaggregated by sex, age and other factors, as appropriate, in formats that are accessible to the public and to policy makers for, inter alia, gender-based analysis, monitoring and impact assessment, and support new work to develop statistics and indicators, especially in areas where information is particularly lacking;

(b) Regularly compile and publish crime statistics, and monitor trends in law enforcement concerning violations of the rights of women and girls to increase awareness in order to develop more effective policies;

(c) Develop national capacity to undertake policy-oriented and gender-related research and impact studies by universities and national research/training institutes to enable gender-specific knowledge-based policy-making.

B. Further actions to be taken at the national level

By Governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and other actors of civil society :

78. (a) Encourage the creation of training and legal literacy programmes which build and support the capacities of women's organizations to advocate for women's and girls' human rights and fundamental freedoms;

(b) Encourage collaboration, where appropriate, among Governments, NGOs, grass-roots organizations and traditional and community leaders for the promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls, the dignity and worth of the human person and equal rights for women and men;

(c) Encourage cooperation between governmental authorities, parliamentarians and other relevant authorities and women's organizations, including NGOs, as appropriate, in ensuring that legislation is non-discriminatory;

(d) Provide gender-sensitive training to all actors, including police, prosecutors and the judiciary, in dealing with victims of violence, particularly women and girls, including sexual violence.

79. (a) Adopt a holistic approach to women's physical and mental health throughout the life-cycle, take further measures to redesign health information, services and training for health workers in order to make them gender-sensitive, promote gender balance at all levels of the health-care system, and reflect women's perspective and right to privacy, confidentiality, voluntary and informed consent;

(b) Reinforce efforts to ensure universal access to high quality primary health-care throughout the life cycle, including sexual and reproductive health-care, not later than 2015;

(c) Review and revise national policies, programmes and legislation to implement the key actions for the further implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development adopted by the General Assembly at its twenty-first special session, paying particular attention to achieving the specific benchmarks to reduce maternal mortality, to increase the proportion of births assisted by skilled attendants, to provide the widest achievable range of safe and effective family planning and contraceptive methods and reduce young people's risk of HIV/AIDS;

(d) Strengthen measures to improve the nutritional status of all girls and women, recognizing the effects of severe and moderate malnutrition, the lifelong implications of nutrition and the link between mother and child health, by promoting and enhancing support for programmes to reduce malnutrition, such as school meal programmes, mother-child-nutrition programmes and micronutrient supplementation, giving special attention to bridging the gender gap in nutrition;

(e) Review with the full participation of women and monitor the impact of health-sector reform initiatives on women's health and their enjoyment of human rights, in particular with regard to rural and urban health service delivery to women living in poverty, and ensure that reforms secure full and equal access to available, affordable and high-quality health care and services for all women, taking into account the diverse needs of women;

(f) Design and implement programmes with the full involvement of adolescents, as appropriate, to provide them with education, information and appropriate, specific, user-friendly and accessible services, without discrimination, to address effectively their reproductive and sexual health needs, taking into account their right to privacy, confidentiality, respect and informed consent, and the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents and legal guardians to provide in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (51), in conformity with the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and ensuring that in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child are a primary consideration. These programmes should, inter alia, build adolescent girls' self-esteem and help them take responsibility for their own lives; promote gender equality and responsible sexual behaviour; raise awareness about, prevent and treat sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS and sexual violence and abuse; and counsel adolescents on avoiding unwanted and early pregnancies;

(g) Design and implement programmes to provide social services and support to pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers, in particular to enable them to continue and complete their education;

(h) Give particular attention to developing and improving access to improved and new technologies and to safe and affordable drugs and treatments to meet women's health needs, including cardio/pulmonary diseases, hypertension, osteoporosis, breast-, cervical- and ovarian cancer and family planning and contraceptive methods, for both women and men,

80. Develop and use frameworks, guidelines and other practical tools and indicators to accelerate gender mainstreaming, including gender-based research, analytical tools and methodologies, training, case studies, statistics and information.

81. (a) Provide equal opportunities and favourable conditions for women of all ages and backgrounds on equal terms with men by encouraging their entry into politics and their participation at all levels;

(b) Encourage the nomination of more women candidates, including, inter alia, through political parties, quotas or measurable goals or other appropriate means for election to parliaments and other legislative structures, to increase their share and contribution in the formulation of public policy;

(c) Develop and maintain consultative processes and mechanisms, in partnership with women's organizations, including NGOs and community groups, to ensure that all women, with particular attention to those who face particular barriers to their participation in public life, are fully involved in and informed about decisions that impact their lives.

82. (a) Promote and protect the rights of women workers and take action to remove structural and legal barriers as well as stereotypical attitudes to gender equality at work, addressing, inter alia, gender bias in recruitment; working conditions; occupational segregation and harassment; discrimination in social protection benefits; women's occupational health and safety; unequal career opportunities and inadequate sharing, by men, of family responsibilities;

(b) Promote programmes to enable women and men to reconcile their work and family responsibilities and to encourage men and to share equally with women household and child-care responsibilities;

(c) Develop or strengthen policies and programmes to support the multiple roles of women in contributing to the welfare of the family in its various forms, which acknowledge the social significance of maternity and motherhood, parenting, the role of parents and legal guardians in the upbringing of children and caring for other family members. Such policies and programmes should also promote shared responsibility of parents, women and men and society as a whole in this regard;

(d) Design, implement and promote family friendly policies and services, including affordable, accessible and quality care services for children and other dependants, parental and other leave schemes and campaigns to sensitize public opinion and other relevant actors on equal sharing of employment and family responsibilities between women and men;

(e) Develop policies and programmes to enhance the employability of women and their access to quality jobs, through improving access to formal, non-formal and vocational training, lifelong learning and retraining, long-distance education, including in information and communications technology and entrepreneurial skills, particularly in developing countries, to support women's empowerment in the different stages of their lives;

(f) Take action to increase women's participation and to bring about a balanced representation of women and men in all sectors and occupations in the labour market, inter alia, by encouraging the creation or expansion of institutional networks to support the career development and promotion of women;

(g) Develop and/or strengthen programmes and policies to support women entrepreneurs, including those engaged in new enterprises, through access to information, training, including vocational training, new technologies, networks, credit and financial services;

(h) Initiate positive steps to promote equal pay for equal work or work of equal value and to diminish differentials in incomes between women and men;

(i) Encourage and support the education of girls in science, mathematics, new technologies, including information technologies, and technical subjects, and encourage women, including through career advising, to seek employment in high-growth and high-wage sectors and jobs;

(j) Develop policies and implement programmes, particularly for men and boys, on changing stereotypical attitudes and behaviours concerning gender roles and responsibilities to promote gender equality and positive attitudes and behaviour;

(k) Strengthen gender-awareness campaigns and gender equality training among women and men, girls and boys to eliminate the persistence of harmful stereotypes;

(l) Analyse and respond, as necessary, to the major reasons why men and women may be affected differently by the process of job creation and retrenchment associated with economic transition and structural transformation of the economy, including globalization;

(m) Promote gender-sensitivity and social responsibility of the private sector, inter alia, through the management of work time and dissemination of gender-sensitive information and advocacy campaign.

83. (a) Strengthen or establish, where appropriate national collaborative and regular reporting mechanisms, with the participation of NGOs, especially women's organizations, to monitor progress on the implementation of national policies, programmes and benchmarks for achieving gender equality;

(b) Support the work of NGOs and community-based organizations in helping disadvantaged women, in particular rural women, in gaining access to financial institutions in establishing businesses and other sustainable means of livelihood;

(c) Take measures to enable all older women to be actively engaged in all aspects of life, as well as to assume a variety of roles in communities, public life and decision-making, and develop and implement policies and programmes to ensure their full enjoyment of human rights and quality of life, as well as to address their needs, with a view to contributing to the realization of a society for all ages;

(d) Design and implement policies and programmes to fully address specific needs of women and girls with disabilities, to ensure their equal access to education at all levels, including technical and vocational training and adequate rehabilitation programmes, to health care and services and employment opportunities, to protect and promote their human rights and, where appropriate, to eliminate existing inequalities between women and men with disabilities.

C. Actions to be taken at the international level

By the United Nations system and international and regional organizations, as appropriate :

84. (a) Assist Governments, at their request, in building institutional capacity and developing national action plans or further implementing existing action plans for the implementation of the Platform for Action;

(b) Support non-governmental organizations, especially women's organizations, to build their capacity to advocate for, implement, assess and follow up the Platform for Action;

(c) Allocate sufficient resources to regional and national programmes to implement the Platform for Action in its 12 critical areas;

(d) Assist Governments in countries with economies in transition to further develop and implement plans and programmes aimed at economic and political empowerment of women;

(e) Encourage the Economic and Social Council to request the regional commissions, within their respective mandates and resources, to build up a database to be updated regularly, in which all programmes and projects carried out in their respective regions by agencies or organizations of the United Nations system are listed, and to facilitate their dissemination, as well as the evaluation of their impact on the empowerment of women through the implementation of the Platform for Action.

85. (a) Continue to implement and evaluate and follow up the mandated work of the United Nations agencies, drawing on the full range of expertise available within the United Nations system, as well as agreed conclusions of the Economic and Social Council and other programmes and initiatives, to mainstream a gender perspective into all policies, programmes and planning of the United Nations system, including through the integrated and coordinated follow-up to all major United Nations conferences and summits, as well as to ensure the allocation of sufficient resources and maintenance of gender units and focal points to achieve this end;

(b) Assist countries, upon their request, in developing methods for and compiling statistics on the contributions of women and men to society and the economy, and the socio-economic situation of women and men, in particular in relation to poverty and paid and unpaid work in all sectors;

(c) Support national efforts, particularly in developing countries, for enlarged access to new information technology as part of the efforts to develop collaborative research, training and information dissemination, including through the gender awareness information and networking system being developed by the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), while at the same time supporting traditional methods of information dissemination, research and training;

(d) Ensure that all United Nations personnel and officials at Headquarters and in the field, especially in field operations, receive training in order to mainstream a gender perspective in their work, including gender impact analysis, and ensure appropriate follow-up to such training;

(e) Support the Commission on the Status of Women, within its mandate, in assessing and advancing the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and its follow-up;

(f) Assist Governments, upon their request, in incorporating a gender perspective as a dimension of development into national development planning;

(g) Assist States Parties, upon their request, in building capacity to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and in this regard encourage States Parties to pay attention to the concluding comments as well as the general recommendations of the Committee.

86. (a) Assist Governments, upon request, in developing gender-sensitive strategies for the delivery of assistance and, where appropriate, responses to humanitarian crises resulting from armed conflict and natural disasters;

(b) Ensure and support the full participation of women at all levels of decision-making and implementation in development activities and peace processes, including conflict prevention and resolution, post-conflict reconstruction, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building, and in this regard, support the involvement of women's organizations, community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations;

(c) Encourage the involvement of women in decision-making at all levels and achieve gender balance in the appointment of women and men, with full respect for the principle of equitable geographical distribution, including, as special envoys and special representatives and in pursuing good offices on behalf of the Secretary-General, inter alia, in matters relating to peacekeeping, peace-building and in operational activities, including as resident coordinators;

(d) Provide gender-sensitive training to all actors, as appropriate, in peacekeeping missions in dealing with victims, particularly women and girls, of violence, including sexual violence;

(e) Take further effective measures to remove the obstacles to the realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, in particular peoples living under colonial and foreign occupation, that continue to adversely affect their economic and social development.

87. (a) Support activities aimed at the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls, including providing support for the activities of women's networks and organizations within the United Nations system;

88. Encourage the implementation of measures designed to achieve the goal of 50/50 gender balance in all posts, including at the Professional level and above, in particular at the higher levels in their secretariats, including in peacekeeping missions, peace negotiations and in all activities, and report thereon, as appropriate, and enhance management accountability mechanisms.

89. Take measures, with the full participation of women, to create, at all levels, an enabling environment conducive to the achievement and maintenance of world peace, for democracy and peaceful settlement of disputes, with full respect for the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of States and non-intervention in matters which are essentially within the jurisdiction of any State, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law, as well as the promotion and protection of all human rights, including the right to development, and fundamental freedoms.

D. Actions to be taken at the national and international levels

By Governments, regional and international organizations, including the United Nations system, and international financial institutions and other actors, as appropriate :

90. Take steps with a view to the avoidance of and refrain from any unilateral measure not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impedes the full achievement of economic and social development by the population of the affected countries, in particular women and children, that hinders their well-being and that creates obstacles to the full enjoyment of their human rights, including the right of everyone to a standard of living adequate for their health and well-being and their right to food, medical care and the necessary social services. Ensure that food and medicine are not used as tools for political pressure.

91. Take urgent and effective measures in accordance with international law with a view to alleviating the negative impact of economic sanctions on women and children.

92. (a) Promote international cooperation to support regional and national efforts in the development and use of gender-related analysis and statistics by, inter alia, providing national statistical offices, upon their request, with institutional and financial support in order to enable them to respond to requests for data disaggregated by sex and age for use by national Governments in the formulation of gender-sensitive statistical indicators for monitoring and policy and programme impact assessments, as well as to undertake regular strategic surveys;

(b) Develop with the full participation of all countries an international consensus on indicators and ways to measure violence against women, and consider establishing a readily accessible database on statistics, legislation, training models, good practices, lessons learned and other resources with regard to all forms of violence against women, including women migrant workers;

(c) In partnership, as appropriate, with relevant institutions, promote, improve, systemize and fund the collection of data disaggregated by sex, age and other appropriate factors, on health and access to health services, including comprehensive information on the impact of HIV/AIDS on women, throughout the life-cycle;

(d) Eliminate gender biases in bio-medical, clinical and social research, including by conducting voluntary clinical trials involving women, with due regard for their human rights, and in strict conformity with internationally accepted legal, ethical, medical, safety, and scientific standards, and gather, analyse and make available to appropriate institutions and to end-users gender-specific information
about dosage, side-effects and effectiveness of drugs, including contraceptives and methods that protect against sexually transmitted infections.

93. (a) Develop and support the capacity of universities, national research and training institutes and other relevant research institutes to undertake gender-related and policy-oriented research in order to inform policy makers and to promote full implementation of the Platform for Action and its follow-up;

(b) Develop a South-South cooperation programme with a view to assisting in the capacity-building of national machineries on women through, inter alia, the sharing of expertise, experiences and knowledge of national machineries on women's empowerment, gender issues and gender mainstreaming methodologies and approaches on the 12 critical areas of the Platform for Action;

(c) Support Governments in their efforts to institute action-oriented programmes and measures to accelerate the full implementation of the Platform for Action, with time-bound targets and/or measurable goals and evaluation methods, including gender impact assessments, with full participation of women for measuring and analysing progress;

(d) Undertake appropriate data collection and research on indigenous women, with their full participation, in order to foster accessible, culturally and linguistically appropriate policies, programmes and services;

(e) Continue research on all current trends that may be creating new gender disparities in order to provide a basis for policy action.

94. (a) Take measures to develop and implement gender-sensitive programmes aimed at stimulating women's entrepreneurship and private initiative, and assist women-owned business in participating in and benefiting from, inter alia, international trade, technological innovation and investment;

(b) Respect, promote and realize the principles contained in the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work of the International Labour Organization and its follow-up, and strongly consider ratification and full implementation of International Labour Organization conventions which are particularly relevant to ensuring women's rights at work;

(c) Encourage the strengthening of existing and emerging microcredit institutions and their capacity, including through the support of international financial institutions, so that credit and related services for self-employment and income-generating activities may be made available to an increasing number of people living in poverty, in particular women, and to further develop, where appropriate, other microfinance instruments;

(d) Reaffirm commitment to gender-sensitive development and support women's role in sustainable and ecologically sound consumption and production patterns and approaches to natural resource management;

(e) Adopt measures to ensure that the work of rural women, who continue to play a vital role in providing food security and nutrition and are engaged in agricultural production and enterprises related to farming, fishing and resource management and home-based work, especially in the informal sector, is recognized and valued in order to enhance their economic security, their access to and control over resources and credit schemes, services and benefits, and their empowerment.

95. (a) Encourage and implement curriculum changes in training for public officials to make them fully gender-sensitive;

(b) Strengthen and promote programmes to support the participation of young women in youth organizations and encourage dialogue among youth between and among developed and developing countries;

(c) Support national efforts to promote formal and non-formal education and mentoring programmes for women and girls in order to enable them to acquire knowledge, develop self-esteem and skills in leadership, advocacy and conflict resolution;

(d) Undertake comprehensive actions to provide skills training for women and girls at all levels, in order to eradicate poverty, in particular the feminization of poverty, through national and international efforts;

(e) With the full voluntary participation of indigenous women, develop and implement educational and training programmes that respect their history, culture, spirituality, languages and aspirations and ensure their access to all levels of formal and non-formal education, including higher education;

(f) Continue to support and strengthen national, regional and international adult literacy programmes with international cooperation in order to achieve a 50 per cent improvement in the levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;

(g) Continue to examine the decline in enrolment rates and the increase in the drop-out rates of girls and boys at the primary and secondary education levels in some countries, and, with international cooperation, design appropriate national programmes to eliminate the root causes and support lifelong learning for women and girls, with a view to ensuring achievement of relevant international targets on education set by the relevant international conferences;

(h) Ensure equal opportunities for women and girls in cultural, recreational and sports activities, as well as in participation in athletics and physical activities at the national, regional and international levels, such as access, training, competition, remuneration and prizes;

(i) Continue to design efforts for the promotion of respect for cultural diversity and dialogue among and within civilizations in a manner which contributes to the implementation of the Platform for Action, which aims at the empowerment of women and the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all women and in a manner which ensures that gender equality and the full enjoyment of all human rights by women are not undermined;

(j) Apply and support positive measures to give all women, particularly indigenous women, equal access to capacity-building and training programmes to enhance their participation in decision-making in all fields and at all levels.

96. (a) Increase cooperation, policy responses, effective implementation of national legislation and other protective and preventive measures aimed at the elimination of violence against women and girls, especially all forms of commercial sexual exploitation, as well as economic exploitation, including trafficking in women and children, female infanticide, crimes committed in the name of honour, crimes committed in the name of passion, racially motivated crimes, abduction and sale of children, dowry-related violence and deaths, acid attacks and harmful traditional or customary practices, such as female genital mutilation, early and forced marriages;

(b) Increase awareness and knowledge of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which affirms that rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence constitute war crimes and, in defined circumstances, crimes against humanity, with the aim of preventing such crimes from occurring, and take measures to support the prosecution of all persons responsible for such crimes and provide avenues for redress to victims; also increase awareness of the extent to which such crimes are used as a weapon of war;

(c) Provide support to non-governmental organizations, in collaboration with the United Nations system, inter alia, through regional and international cooperation, including women's organizations and community groups, in addressing all forms of violence against women and girls, including for programmes to combat race and ethnic-based violence against women and girls;

(d) Encourage and support public campaigns, as appropriate, to enhance public awareness of the unacceptability and social costs of violence against women, and undertake prevention activities to promote healthy and balanced relationships based on gender equality.

97. (a) Intensify cooperation between States of origin, transit and destination to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children;

(b) Support the ongoing negotiations on a draft protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, to supplement the draft United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (52);

(c) As appropriate, pursue and support national, regional and international strategies to reduce the risk to women and girls, including those who are refugees and displaced persons, as well as women migrant workers, of becoming victims of trafficking; strengthen national legislation by further defining the crime of trafficking in all its elements and by reinforcing the punishment accordingly; enact social and economic policies and programmes, as well as informational and awareness-raising initiatives, to prevent and combat trafficking in persons, especially women and children; prosecute perpetrators of trafficking; provide measures to support, assist and protect trafficked persons in their countries of origin and destination; and facilitate their return to and support their reintegration into their countries of origin.

98. (a) Improve knowledge and awareness of the remedies available for violations of women's human rights;

(b) Promote and protect the human rights of all migrant women and implement policies to address the specific needs of documented migrant women and, where necessary, tackle the existing inequalities between men and women migrants to ensure gender equality;

(c) Promote respect for the right of women and men to the freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Recognize the central role that religion, spirituality and belief play in the lives of millions of women and men;

(d) Encourage, through the media and other means, a high awareness of the harmful effects of certain traditional or customary practices affecting the health of women, some of which increase their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, and intensify efforts to eliminate such practices;

(e) Take necessary measures to protect individuals, groups and organs of society engaged in promoting and protecting women's human rights;

(f) Encourage States parties to continue to include a gender perspective in their reports to the treaty bodies; also encourage these bodies to continue to take into account a gender perspective in the imple­­­­­­

mentation of their mandates, taking into account the need to avoid unnecessary duplication and overlapping of their work; and further encourage human rights mechanisms to continue to take into account a gender perspective in their work;

(g) Support innovative programmes to empower older women to increase their contribution to and benefit from development and efforts to combat poverty.

99. (a) Promote comprehensive human rights education programmes, inter alia, in cooperation, where appropriate, with education and human rights institutions, the relevant actors of civil society, in particular non-governmental organizations and the media networks, to ensure widespread dissemination of information on human rights instruments, in particular those concerning the human rights of women and girls;

(b) Take measures through, inter alia, supporting and strengthening existing mechanisms entrusted with prosecuting perpetrators of violations of the human rights of women, to eliminate impunity;

(c) Take measures to eliminate violations of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. Many of these violations have a negative impact on the promotion and protection of the human rights of women;

(d) Address the root causes of armed conflict in a comprehensive and durable manner, as well as the differences in the impact of armed conflict on women and men, and take them into account in relevant policies and programmes in order to, inter alia, enhance the protection of civilians, particularly women and children;

(e) Ensure the release of hostages, particularly women and children, including those subsequently imprisoned, in armed conflict;

(f) Develop and support policies and programmes for the protection of children, especially girls, in hostilities, in order to prohibit their forced recruitment and use by all actors and to promote and/or strengthen mechanisms for their rehabilitation and reintegration, taking into account the specific experiences and needs of girls;

(g) Improve and strengthen the capacity of women affected by situations of armed conflict, including women refugees and displaced women, by, inter alia, involving them in the design and management of humanitarian activities so that they benefit from these activities on an equal basis with men;

(h) Invite the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, other relevant United Nations agencies, within their respective mandates, and other relevant humanitarian organizations as well as Governments to continue to provide adequate support to countries hosting large numbers of refugees and those with displaced persons, in their efforts to provide protection and assistance, paying particular attention to the needs of refugees and other displaced women and children;

(i) Seek to ensure the full and equal participation of women in the promotion of peace, in particular through the full implementation of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (53);

(j) Provide support to and empower women who play an important role within their families as stabilizing factors in conflict and post-conflict situations;

(k) Strengthen efforts towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, based on the priorities established by the United Nations in the field of disarmament, so that released resources could be used for, inter alia, social and economic programmes which benefit women and girls;

(l) Explore new ways of generating new public and private financial resources, inter alia, through the appropriate reduction of excessive military expenditures and the arms trade and investment for arms production and acquisition, including global military expenditures, taking into consideration national security requirements, so as to permit the possible allocation of additional funds for social and economic development, inter alia, for the advancement of women;

(m) Take measures to ensure the protection of refugees, especially women and girls, and their access to and the provision of gender-sensitive appropriate basic social services, including education and health.

100. (a) Cooperate and work with private sector partners and media networks at the national and international levels to promote equal access for women and men as producers and consumers, particularly in the area of information and communications technologies, including through encouraging the media and the information industry consistent with freedom of expression to adopt, or develop further codes of conduct, professional guidelines and other self-regulatory guidelines to remove gender stereotypes and promote balanced portrayals of women and men;

(b) Develop programmes that support women's ability to create, access and promote networking, in particular through the use of new information and communications technology, including through the establishment and support of programmes to build the capacity of women's NGOs in this regard;

(c) Capitalize on the new information technologies, including the Internet, to improve the global sharing of information, research, strengths, lessons learned from women's experiences, including « Herstories » (54) related to achieving gender equality, development and peace, and study other roles that these technologies can play towards that goal.

101. (a) Take effective measures to address the challenges of globalization, including through the enhanced and effective participation of developing countries in the international economic policy decision-making process, in order to, inter alia, guarantee the equal participation of women, in particular those from developing countries, in the process of macroeconomic decision-making;

(b) Take measures, with the full and effective participation of women, to ensure new approaches to international development cooperation, based on stability, growth and equity with the enhanced and effective participation and the integration of developing countries in the globalizing world economy, geared towards poverty eradication and the reduction of gender-based inequality within the overall framework of achieving people-centred sustainable development;

(c) Design and strengthen poverty eradication strategies, with the full and effective participation of women, that reduce the feminization of poverty and enhance the capacity of women and empower them to meet the negative social and economic impacts of globalization;

(d) Intensify efforts to implement poverty eradication programmes and evaluate, with the participation of women, the extent to which these programmes have an impact on the empowerment of women living in poverty, in terms of access to quality training and education as well as physical and mental health care, employment, basic social services, inheritance and access to and control over land, housing, income, microcredit and other financial instruments and services, and introduce improvements to such programmes in the light of the above assessment;

(f) Encourage the establishment, in partnership with private financial institutions, where appropriate, of « lending windows » and other accessible financial services with simplified procedures that are specifically designed to meet the savings, credit and insurance needs of all women;

(g) Undertake comprehensive actions to provide and support quality skills training for women and girls at all levels, on the basis of strategies developed with their full and effective participation, to achieve agreed targets to eradicate poverty, in particular the feminization of poverty, through national, regional and international efforts. National efforts need to be complemented by intensified regional and international cooperation in order to tackle the risks, overcome the challenges and ensure that opportunities created by globalization benefit women, particularly in developing countries;

(h) Establish, with the full and effective participation of women and in consultation with civil society, particularly NGOs, in a timely manner, social development funds, where appropriate, to alleviate the negative effects on women associated with structural adjustment programmes and trade liberalization and the disproportionate burden borne by women living in poverty;

(i) Identify and implement development-oriented and durable solutions which integrate a gender perspective to external debt and debt-servicing problems of developing countries, including least developed countries, inter alia, through debt relief, including the option of ODA debt cancellation, in order to help them to finance programmes and projects targeted at development, including the advancement of women;

(j) Support the Cologne initiative for the reduction of debt, particularly the speedy implementation of the enhanced heavily indebted poor countries debt initiative; ensure the provision of adequate funds for its implementation and implement the provision that funds saved should be used to support anti-poverty programmes that address gender dimensions;

(k) Promote and accelerate the implementation of the 20/20 initiative, which integrates a gender perspective to fully benefit all, particularly women and girls;

(l) Call for continued international cooperation, including the reaffirmation to strive to fulfil the yet to be attained internationally agreed target of 0.7 per cent of the gross national product of developed countries for overall official development assistance as soon as possible, thereby increasing the flow of resources for gender equality, development and peace;

(m) Facilitate the transfer to developing countries and countries with economies in transition of appropriate technology, particularly new and modern technology, and encourage efforts by the international community to eliminate restrictions on such transfers, as an effective means of complementing national efforts for further acceleration in achieving the goals of gender equality, development and peace;

(n) Recommend that the Preparatory Committee for the Millennium Assembly make an effort, within the context of gender mainstreaming in the United Nations system, to integrate a gender perspective in all ­­­­­­

activities and documents related to the Millennium Assembly and Summit, including in the consideration of poverty eradication;

(o) Create an enabling environment and design and implement policies that promote and protect the enjoyment of all human rights ­ civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, including the right to development ­ and fundamental freedoms, as part of the efforts to achieve gender equality, development and peace.

102. (a) Create and strengthen an enabling environment, in accordance with national laws, to support the capacity of women's NGOs to mobilize resources to ensure the sustainability of their development activities;

(b) Encourage the establishment and strengthening of multi-stakeholder partnerships/cooperation at all levels among international and intergovernmental organizations, with relevant actors of civil society, including NGOs, the private sector and trade unions, and women's organizations and other NGOs, communications and media systems in support of the goals of the Fourth World Conference on Women;

(c) Encourage partnerships and cooperation among Governments, international organizations, in particular international financial institutions, and multilateral organizations, private sector institutions and civil society, including NGOs, especially women's and community-based organizations, to support poverty eradication initiatives focused on women and girls;

(d) Recognize the crucial role of and support women and women's NGOs and community-based organizations in the implementation of Agenda 21 (55), by integrating a gender perspective in the formulation, design and implementation of sustainable environmental and resource management mechanisms, programmes and infrastructure.

103. (a) Promote programmes for healthy active ageing that stress the independence, equality, participation and security of older women and undertake gender-specific research and programmes to address their needs;

(b) As a matter of priority, especially in those countries most affected, and in partnership with NGOs, wherever possible, intensify education, services and community-based mobilization strategies to protect women of all ages from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, including through the development of safe, affordable, effective and easily accessible female-controlled methods, including such methods as microbicides and female condoms that protect against sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS; voluntary and confidential HIV testing and counselling; the promotion of responsible sexual behaviour, including abstinence and condom use; and the development of vaccines, simple low-cost diagnosis and single dose treatments for sexually transmitted infections;

(c) Provide access to adequate and affordable treatment, monitoring and care for all people, especially women and girls, infected with sexually transmitted diseases or living with life-threatening diseases, including HIV/AIDS and associated opportunistic infections, such as tuberculosis. Provide other services, including adequate housing and social protection, including during pregnancy and breastfeeding; assist boys and girls orphaned as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; and provide gender-sensitive support systems for women and other family members who are involved in caring for persons affected by serious health conditions, including HIV/AIDS;

(d) Take effective and expeditious measures to mobilize international and national public opinion concerning the effects of different dimensions of the world drug problems on women and girls and ensure that appropriate resources are provided to this end.

104. Encourage partnerships between Governments and NGOs in the implementation of commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women and at other United Nations world conferences and summits in order to promote gender equality, development and peace in the twenty-first century.

BIJLAGE 7

UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

« Women 2000 : Gender Equality, Development

and Peace for the 21st Century »

EU FINAL STATEMENT IN PLENARY

10 june 2000

Mr. President

I should like to make a statement on behalf of the European Union and Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey.

Before addressing matters concerning this Special Session, I would like to express our sincere condolences on the passing away of President Assad, and kindly request the Syrian delegation to convey these sentiments to the people and government of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Mr. President

The Special Session and the regional meetings brought together women from all over the world. Governments, international organizations, the press, and NGOs and other members of civil society have come together, discussed vital issues, shared experiences, and learned from each other. We have found new ways to work together towards what we are all here for, the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action which, together with CEDAW, remains the cornerstone in the pursuit of gender equality. What we have done here is a step forward, maybe a small step but a step nevertheless, to promote women's human rights.

We have made real progress towards gender equality, development and peace. We have reaffirmed the role of education in the empowerment of women. We agreed on new and clearer language on state obligations to end violence against women, including domestic violence, marital rape and crimes committed in the name of honour. We have recognized the essential role of gender equality and women's participation in poverty eradication and development, and the importance of clear targets and indicators on gender equality. We have underlined the enormous contribution women make to the economy, and the importance of laws and policies, which enable women to make this contribution. There is a clear call that men and women should equally share the tasks of unpaid work such as household work and caring for dependents. Gender equality is a men's as well as a women's responsibility. We have highlighted the crucial role of NGOs. We have called for a gender perspective in macro-economic policies.

Mr. President

We have reaffirmed that the human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality. A growing number of countries have introduced legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

It has not proved possible to mention this achievement in the document we just adopted. The European Union is committed by Article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty to combat discrimination on the basis of sex, race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.

Such discrimination on the basis of sexual orientations is incompatible with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and should be ended.

Though the document just approved contains a number of crucial issues for gender equality, we were disappointed that the document contains no explicit reference to the sexual rights of women.

In our opinion sexual rights are covered in the document, as they were at Beijing. If we recognize the rights, why can we not use the term. We hope that « sexual rights » will very soon become standard terminology in the United Nations.

We also regret that is wasn't possible to utilize in this final outcome document the language agreed last year at the Special Session on Cairo +5 with regard to abortion issues.

Mr. President

Before closing, I should like to take this opportunity to express our profound appreciation for the hard work of all those involved in the preparation of this Review and of the outcome documents. Our sincere
thanks also go to the Secretariat, including the Interpreters and Conference Officers, the Bureau, in particularly the Chair of the Committee of the Whole, the Chairs of the Working Groups and of the Contact Group, as well as the facilitators, our negociations partners and to the NGOs, who filled us with enthusiasm and ideas and kept us on our toes.

Mr. President

We have worked hard for this Outcome. Is is a real achievement. Let us now all go out and implement it.

Mr. President

We would like to request that this statement be included in the Final Report of the Special Session.

BIJLAGE 8

DEMOCRACY THROUGH PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

New York, 7 June 2000

A tripartite consultation organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union

in cooperation with the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women

on the occasion of the « Beijing+5 » Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly

Twelve suggestions for parliamentary follow-up to « Beijing+5 »

To support governmental efforts to implement the Beijing Platform for Action, a number of measures and actions could be considered as follows :

Information of Parliament

1. Governments should formally refer to parliament the Beijing Platform for Action, the Outcome of the Special Session of the General Assembly and, as appropriate, the conclusions of the preparatory regional meetings of the Session.

Setting up of a non-discriminatory and gender-sensitive legislative framework

2. Governments and parliaments should take further sustained action to strengthen and develop the legal framework conducive to the implementation of gender equality provisions in all fields. Particular attention should be given to the repealing of discriminatory legislation, in accordance with the definition of discrimination contained in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Beijing Platform for Action.

Budgetary resources

3. Parliaments should vote the appropriations required to implement administrative initiatives aimed at gender equality. In particular, adequate resources in national budgets for national machinery for the advancement of gender equality should be put in place to enable them to implement their mandates.

4. Governments should systematically include a gender perspective in their budgetary proposals. Similarly, mechanisms for a parliamentary reading of the budget from a gender perspective should be systematically developed.

Parliamentary mechanisms for follow-up to the Beijing Process

5. Action should be taken to ensure that the Beijing commitments are referred, as appropriate, to all parliamentary committees concerned.

6. One way of ensuring the monitoring of progress in implementing the Beijing commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action may be the establishment of parliamentary committees on gender issues. Such committees should, if possible, include an equal number of men and women. They should aim at ensuring that debate on the Beijing Platform for Action and its follow-up will take place in all sectors and fields.

Raising awareness and fuelling public debate

7. Individual members of parliament should be encouraged to fuel public debate on the issues covered by the Beijing Platform for Action and its follow-up, and should relay the views of the electorate to parliament on these issues, as appropriate.

8. Parliaments with no or very few women members should be made sensitive to gender issues. Action in this regard should be taken by national governments and national mechanisms, the IPU, the regional parliamentary assemblies and NGOs.

9. Parliaments should be rendered particularly sensitive to gender issues in countries where budgetary austerity policies or war-related difficulties may relegate such issues to a lower level of priority.

Enhancing women's political participation

10. Parliaments should take all possible action to promote women's political participation. To that end, efforts should be made to remove electoral laws that are women-unfriendly and to develop electoral
mechanisms that facilitate the election of women, as recommended by the IPU in its Plan of Action to Correct Present Imbalances in the Participation of Men and Women in Politics.

11. Internal organisational measures should be taken to facilitate women's participation in parliament and to ensure a balance between the professional and family obligations of their members. Furthermore, action should be taken to ensure that a fair proportion of women form part of the governing bodies of parliament and are presiding officers of parliamentary committees.

12. Parliamentarians, as members of political parties, should encourage party structures to open up their ranks to women and remove political and electoral practices that are women-unfriendly. In particular, political parties should, where appropriate, amend their statutes and rules to facilitate women's access to their leadership structures. Political parties should also encourage the selection of more women to stand as candidates in local, national and regional elections.

BIJLAGE 9

WOMEN 2000

Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century

New York, 5-9 June 2000

Programme of Activities

Friday, 2 June 2000

10:30-12:00

Pre-session Briefing for Journalists. A special briefing will be given by His Excellency Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, President of the General Assembly, Ms. Angela E.V. King, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, Ms. Yakin Ertürk, Director, UN Division for the Advancement of Women, Ms. Christine Kapalata, Chairperson of the Commission on the Status of Women acting as Preparatory Committee for the Beijing+5 special session, and Ms. Afaf Mahfouz, President of CONGO. Organized by the Department of Public Information. Room S-226.

Monday, 5 June 2000

10:00-1:00

Opening of the special session(Statements by the President of the Assembly and the Secretary-General; organizational matters; opening of the debate in the plenary).

11:00-1:00

First meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

11:00-1:00

Special event : Panel on Globalization, Governance and Women's Health. Organized by the Permanent Mission of the Philippines to the United Nations. Conference room 3.

Special event : Panel on « Advancing protection for internally displaced women and girls ». Organized by the International Rescue Committee with International Alert. Conference room 3.

1:30-3:00

Special event : Panel on the « Contribution of the Microcredit Summit Campaign to the Platform for Action ». Organized by Unifem, ILO and the Microcredit Summit Campaign. Conference room 4.

3:00-6:00

Second plenary meeting of the special session (continuation of the debate). Second meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

3:15-5:00

Special event : Skills demonstration workshop on approaches that work in involving men as partners in AIDS prevention and care. Organized by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). DHL Auditorium.

3:30-5:00

Special event : Launch of Progress of the World's Women. Organized by Unifem. Conference room 3.

Special event : Panel on « the role of men and boys in ending gender-based violence ». Organized by the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, the Division for the Advancement of Women, Unicef, UNDP, Unifem, and the UN Men's Group for Gender Equality. Conference room 3.

1:15-2:45

Special event : Panel on the Optional Protocol. Organized by the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, the Division for the Advancement of Women. DHL auditorium.

1:15-2:45

Special event : Presentation of good practices in gender mainstrearning and the inventory of training materials. Organized by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Women and Gender Equality under the leadership of Unifem, UNDP, Unicef and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). Conference room B.

1:30-3:00

Special event : « Dialogue Between Representatives of the Women and Armed Conflict Caucus and Representatives of Relevant UN Agencies on Actions to Implement and Achieve the Objectives of ChaptereE of the Platform for Action ». Organized by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Women and Armed Conflict Caucus. Conference room 4.

3:00-4:00

Seminar on Men and Gender Equality with the Nordic Ministers responsible for Gender Equality. Organized by Gender Equality, Swedish Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communications. DHL Auditorium.

3:00-6:00

Fourth plenary meeting of the special session (continuation of the debate). Fourth meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

3:00-6:00

Special event : Forum chaired by the Executive Director/UNFPA and featuring national delegates, on « Best Practices in Gender, Population and Development ». Organized by UNFPA. Conference room 3.

3:15-5:00

Special event : Launch of the Gender Awareness Information and Networking System (GAINS). Organized by INSTRAW. Conference room B.

6:30-8:00

Special event : Panel on the monitoring of continued implementation of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights at a regional and global level. Organized by KULU ­ Women and Development Denmark, and Asian-Pacific Resources and Research Centre for Women (ARROW). Conference room 4.

Special event : Panel on Ending Female Genital Mutilation : What can we measure and how ? Organized by Unicef, WHO, World Bank and the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations. Conference room 3.

Wednesday, 7 June 2000

9:00-9:45

NGO Briefing, Conference room 4.

10:00-1:00

Fifth plenary meeting of the special session (continuation of the debate). Fifth meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

9:30-1:00

Special event : Meeting between members of Parliament, representatives of governments and concerned intergovernmental organizations on action at the national level following Beijing+5 review process. Organized by IPU and the Division for the Advancement of Women. Conference room 3.

10:00-11:30

Special event : Launch of CD-ROM, « Women Go Global ». Organized by the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women and the Division for the Advancement of Women. Conference room B.

Symposium on the Asian Regional Initiative on Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. Organized by the Permanent Mission of the Philippines. Conference room 3.

6:30-7:30

Special event : Performance piece : « Women Can't Wait » with a Special Introduction by Meryl Streep. A creative work commissioned by Equality Now as part of its international campaign against discriminatory laws. « Women Can't Wait! », written and performed by Sarah Jones, presents women from France, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, the United States and Uruguay as they prepare to address governments at the United Nations during the Special Session. Organized by Equality Now. Conference room 4.

6:15-7:30

Special event : Presentation of the gender focal point study. Organized by the Inter-Agency Committee on Women and Gender Equality under the leadership of the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women and UNFPA. Conference room 3.

6:00-8:00

Special event : Panel on « Putting Early Marriage on the Women's Global Agenda ». Organized by Unicef and Forum on Marriage and the Rights of Women and Girls, UK. DHL Auditorium.

Thursday, 8 June 2000

9:00-9:45

NGO Briefing. Conference room 4.

10:00-1:00

Seventh plenary meeting of the special session (continuation of the debate). Seventh meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

9:00-11:00

Special event : Panel on peace-building and peacekeeping. Organized by the Inter-Agency Committee on Women and Gender Equality under the leadership of the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee. Conference room 3.

DPI/NGO Briefing : Beijing +5 Emerging Issues. Invited speakers include Ms. Yakin Ertürk, Director, UN Division for the Advancement of Women, Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director, Unifem, Ms. Christine Kapalata, Chairperson of the Commission on the Status of Women acting as Preparatory Committee for the Beijing+5 special session, Gita Sen, Coordinator on Alternative Development Frameworks, India. Organized by Department of Public Information and the Division for the Advancement of Women. DHL Auditorium.

3:00-5:00

Special event : Panel on « Initiatives and best practices of Greece in facing violence against women ». Organized by the Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations. Conference room B.

11:00-12:00

Special event : Launch of map of Women in Politics. Produced by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in collaboration with the Department of Public Information. Room S-226.

Special event : Panel on combating poverty through decent work and gender equality. Organized by ILO. Conference room 3.

11:45-1:15

Meeting of Conference of Non-governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CONGO) NGOs. Conference room 4.

1:15-2:45

Special event : Panel on « Mainstreaming a gender perspective in peacekeeping operations ». Organized by the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, the Division for the Advancement of Women and DPKO. Conference room 3.

1:15-2:45

Special event : Panel on « Challenges for promoting and protecting women's human rights ». Organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Division for the Advancement of Women and Unifem. DHL Auditorium.

1:15-2:45

Special event : Presentation of CD-ROM on « Status of Women in Africa ». Organized by the Economic Commission for Africa. Conference room B.

1:30-3:00

Special event : Girls Speak Out. Organized by the Working Group on Girls, Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), National Council for Research on Women (NCRW), World Vision International (WVI), and Unicef. Conference room 4.

3:00-6:00

Eighth plenary meeting of the special session (continuation of the debate). Eighth meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

3:15-6:00

Regional Caucuses. Conference room 4.

3:00-4:45

Special event : Panel on Gender and Information and Communications Technologies : Building New Partnerships. Organized by Unifem, UNDP and Cisco Systems. Conference room 3.

Special event : Presentation of study on women's participation in the electoral process. Organized by DESA. Conference room B.

6:00-8:00

Special event : Follow-up seminar on mainstreaming gender in the programme budgeting process. Organized by the Inter-Agency Committee on Women and Gender Equality under the leadership of the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women. DHL Auditorium.

6:00-8:00

Special event : Panel on Women and Armed Conflict. Organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Unifem, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. Conference room 3.

6:30-8:00

Special event : Workshop on networks of, for and by poor women entrepreneurs. Organized by Women's World Banking and the International Coalition on Women and Credit. Conference room 4.

Friday, 9 June 2000

9:00-9:45

NGO Briefing, Conference room 4.

10:00-1:00

Ninth plenary meeting of the special session (continuation of the debate).

10:00-1:00

Live Feed. Conference room 4.

9:00-11 :00

Special event : « Beijing+5 : the way forward. » Exchange of views between the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs and interested non-governmental organizations. DHL Auditorium.

10:00-12:00

Special event : Meeting on legal and social advisory services for women : Best practices from German Development Cooperation since Beijing. Organized by the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations. Conference room 10.

10:00-1:00

Special event : Panel on women in power. Organized by the United Nations Committee for Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) and the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations. Conference room 3.

10:00-11:30

Special event : Presentation of the « Screening Gender Audio-visual Training Tool Kit to Promote Fair Gender Portrayal on Television ». Organized by the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations. Conference room B.

11:15-12:30

Special event : Film screening « At the end of a Gun : Women and War » and launch of publication on women and armed conflict. Organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross. DHL Auditorium.

Town Hall meeting chaired by the First Lady of Burkina Faso, and with the participation of the first ladies of Ghana and Burundi, on « The fight against female gential mutilation ». Organized by UNDP. DHL Auditorium.

1:15-2:45

Special event : Panel on Women Leaders in the United Nations paving the way to gender equality, development and peace in the twenty-first century. Organized by WFP. Conference room 3.

1:30-3:00

Special event : Panel on globalization, governance and women. Organized by the Society for International Development and Women in Development Network (WID). Conference room 4.

3:00-6:00

Tenth plenary meeting of the special session (conclusion of the debate, adoption of the final document, closing of the special session).

3:00-4:30

Special event : Panel on sexual harassment. Organized by the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women. DHL Auditorium.

3:15-3:45

THE HISTORICAL JOURNEY 25 YEARS OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S CONFERENCES. A historical perspective on United Nations work for women. Conference room 3.

3:15-6:00

Live feed of plenary. Conference room 4.

BIJLAGE 10

FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

REMARKS AT WOMEN 2000 - BEIJING + FIVE

THE UNITED NATIONS, JUNE 5, 2000

Unofficial transcript

To all of the United Nations and UNIFEM officials; to our Ambassador Richard Holbrooke; to all of those who are gathered here as delegates; members of our Congress and members of our diplomatic community : I want to begin by thanking the Secretary General for his introduction and his commitment to women's rights as central to all of our debates over war and peace, poverty and development, and every other challenge facing humanity. I also want to thank Noeleen Hizer and all of UNIFEM for championing women's economic empowerment and equality, and especially for once again bringing us together to spotlight the power of microcredit to transform lives and families, economies and countries.

Over the past 7 years, the UN has played a pivotal role in defining and guaranteeing women's rights and human rights in every corner of the globe. At UN convenings in Vienna and Copenhagen, Cairo and The Hague. At the 50th anniversary of WHO in Geneva. Here at the UN on International Women's Day and the anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. In the struggle against AIDS we have seen progress being made. And five years ago in Beijing at the UN 4th World Conference on Women, we saw so many steps taken. I have been privileged to participate in many of these events and I count the Beijing Conference as one of the most moving and most meaningful experiences of my life.

We came to Beijing from 189 different countries. Mothers and sisters, daughters and wives, doctors and lawyers, homemakers and policymakers, artists and activists. We wore different clothing, practiced different religions, and spoke different languages. But, with one strong voice, we proclaimed for all the world to hear that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights.

Although our shout was heard around the world, not everyone truly understood it. I learned that when I was on a Voice of America radio call-in show not long after. A gentleman called and he asked me the following question : « What did you mean when you said at Beijing that women's rights were human rights ? » I asked the gentleman to close his eyes for a minute and think about all the rights that he, as a man, had : The right to go to school. To health care. To live without fear of violence at the hands of loved ones or strangers. To vote. To own one's own property. To get a job or credit. To speak and worship freely. To seek legal redress. The right to be fully human, to be able to develop one's own God-given potential.

Many of us have spent our lifetimes fighting for these rights. That is the mission that brought thousands of us to Beijing and bring us now to New York to celebrate our progress we have made in the last five years and recommit ourselves to finishing the work of achieving women's equality.

We have come to the UN not only because we believe that all women and girls should be treated with dignity and respect. But also because we know no country today will ever get ahead if half of its citizens are left behind.

Beijing was important ­ because women broke centuries of silence and spoke out on issues that matter most to us, to our families to our societies. Women put our hopes and fears, our concerns and challenges on the world's agenda.

Beijing was important because countries agreed to a Platform for Action to meet goals in 12 different areas. The platform provided a blueprint for achieving economic, social and political equality and progress for women. So that, in the future, inaction and regression on women's rights would be viewed, not simply as the way things are and always have been, but rather as a violation of promises agreed to.

After the delegates went home, was used the Platform as a roadmap for elected officials and as a rallying cry for NGOs and citizens who began forming partnerships to fulfill the commitments that were entered into.

And since we spoke out in Beijing, look what has happened. Countries have passed laws raising the legal age for marriage, banning female genital mutilation, and criminalizing domestic violence.

Since we spoke out in Beijing, rape is now recognized as a crime by international war tribunals. More women are getting microcredit, running their own businesses, and owning property in their own names.

Here in the US, we created the President's Interagency Council for Women to ensure that every single government agency works to fulfill the promises that we made in Beijing. We increased our investments in everything from childcare to family planning to combating breast cancer. We quadrupled the number of domestic violence shelters and dramatically expanded microcredit loans to women here in our country as well as around the world. And we started a new global democracy initiative called Vital Voices which has
worked to give thousands of women, from Bulgaria to Bolivia, the skills and resources needed to build democracy, prosperity, civil society and peace.

These women and countless others like them who started in Beijing are now part of a movement. Where before women too often worked in isolation, now we are increasingly working together, blending our voices in a chorus for change.

I've heard those voices in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where Protestant and Catholic women, who had buried too many children, and seen too much hatred and bloodshed, vowed to turn their cries of « enough » into a force for peace that could not be ignored.

I've heard those voices from Kuwait, where women are working to win the right to vote. From women in Central Asia who are building democracy from the ground up. And from women in El Salvador and Guatemala, who put aside decades of civil war to build better futures for their children.

I've heard those voices in South Africa. From women who were homeless squatters but are now using micro loans to build more than 100 homes, a day care center, a store, and a community. When I asked how many planned to own their own home someday, every single hand of the hundreds that were there went up.

I've heard those voices in Central and Eastern Europe, from women who marched for freedom and now want to play a role in their new democracies. And in Kosovo and Bosnia, from women who had lost children and husbands to ethnic violence and are trying to reclaim their lives and rebuild their communities.

And I've heard those voices in my country, from women who are still fighting for equal pay for equal work. From the hundreds of thousands of mothers who recently marched on Washington DC to demand that our Congress pass sensible gun safety measures to protect our children.

We come here to honor those voices and to speak for all those women who still do not have a voice.

We come here today because, for all our progress we can point to, our work is far from done.

When girls are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small ­ and when honor killings continue to be tolerated ­ our work is far from done. When millions of girls are still kept out of school, often by their own families, our work is far from done.

When babies are still denied food, drowned, suffocated, and abandoned simply because they are born girls, our work is far from done.

When women are still denied the right to plan their families, when they are still forced to have abortions, or are circumcised or sterilized against their will, our work is far from done.

When women and girls are increasingly victims of war, and turned into refugees by the millions, our work is far from done.

When girls are abducted, and used as child soldiers, human shields, and sexual slaves, our work is far from done.

When Unicef tells us, as they did this week, that violence against women and girls is a global epidemic that kills, tortures and maims ­ and yet still it is viewed in too many places as acceptable, cultural or trivial, our work is far from done.

When women in some countries are still denied the right to vote, our work is far from done.

And when women's work is still not valued, by economists, by governments, and by employers who pay them less and treat them worse, our work is far from done.

So we must continue to stand up and speak out and keep working ­ not only to eliminate the inequities that have confronted women for millennia, but also to confront the new dangers that threaten to derail the progress we have already made.

We must speak out for the women who are still dying in childbirth or from unsafe abortions, for the women who cannot get health care, for the women suffering from cancer, malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS.

You know, the face of AIDS today is increasingly female in the world today. And it is tragically cutting short young women's lives, leaving behind AIDS orphans, who too often are left on dangerous streets to fend for themselves.

Some of us may remember being here in December and hearing from some of those AIDS orphans and the stories they told about the lives they were now leading.

While we see pockets of progress against HIV/AIDS in countries such as Thailand, Uganda, and Senegal, the present international response is still no match for the scope of this pandemic. This is not an African problem, or an Asian problem, or an American problem. We need every government, every business, every NGO, every foundation, and every individual to join an international crusade now to prevent HIV/AIDS, to treat those it strikes, and never to give up until we find a cure.

And, if we are going to finish the work begun in Beijing, then we must also speak out on behalf of the one million trafficking victims who, every year, are being bought and sold into modern slavery.

This is one of the greatest human rights abuses facing girls and women today.

What meaning can free markets have for women who, desperate for economic opportunity, are bought and sold like any consumer product ? What meaning can freedom and democracy have for the growing number of women and children who are trafficked into other countries to be abused, degraded, and enslaved ?

I know that some of our countries and international organizations have taken steps to address this tragedy. But, all of us must do more to prevent trafficking, protect its victims, and prosecute as criminals those who are responsible for this crime of trafficking.

Trafficking by organized criminal networks is one of the most tragic byproducts of the global marketplace. And it's a stark reminder that globalization can bring problems as well as promise.

We know that in many places changes in technology and trade in the global economy have already brought new markets, new jobs, new trading partners and new ways of sharing information on everything from starting businesses to running for office, from passing legislation to organizing protests.

But when it comes to women, globalization should not mean marginalization.

And we have to acknowledge that the benefits of globalization have clearly not reached all people, including in my own country. Around the world, women make up 70 percent of those living in absolute poverty. Too many children are still exploited and abused in the new global workforce. If we are going to finish the work begun in Beijing then we must ensure that the new global economy does not push women down or leave them behind. And I want to thank Unifem for making this point again and again.

If we know what works, we must be committed to doing it. We know that the single most important investment a developing country can make is in educating its girls and extending equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities to women. When countries make educating their daughters a priority, we decrease poverty and infant mortality. We create stronger families, citizens, and workforces.

Therefore if we are to finish our work, then we must open primary school doors to the 113 million children who are now kept out ­ the vast majority of whom are girls ­ and create more places in secondary school and higher education as well.

If we are to finish our work, then we must turn the digital divide into a digital bridge, bringing to poor children in remote areas the computers, technology, and books that school children in wealthy areas take for granted.

If we are to finish our work, we have to provide all children the nutrition and health care they need to grow, learn and thrive.

As Unifem has made clear, women's progress depends on economic progress. And microcredit is one of the most effective tools that we have at our disposal.

And so if we are to finish our work, we have to make sure that women, too often shut out off from commercial banks credit, have access to the loans needed to turn their dreams and hard work into entrepreneurship and prosperity.

With us today we have a panel of experts who have championed microcredit loans around the world. I was privileged to join some of them on a similar panel that Unifem sponsored at Beijing. We have come a long way since then and we'll talk about that. Today microcredit is reaching more than 20 million people ­ and we are on track to meeting the Microcredit Summit goal of bringing microcredit to 100 million of the world's poorest families.

I've met so many of these women whose lives were literally transformed because of microcredit. In Chile, I remember meeting a seamstress who was able to buy a high-speed sewing machine with a small loan to start a clothing business. She told me that the sewing machine meant so much to her that she couldn't stop kissing it. And she said ­ and these are her words ­ that she felt like a « caged bird set free ».

We can just think of all the caged birds throughout the world who can similarly be set free.

And in the last five years I have relished the chance to introduce my husband and other heads of state to microcredit. The President and I, accompanied by President and Mrs. Mouseveni of Uganda, went to see a village bank program. Neither of the Presidents had ever seen anything like it. I think we made converts out of both of them because certainly my husband began penciling in visits to microcredit projects wherever he went. And I thought that was an excellent idea, because where he goes, the press goes, the entourage goes, he drags Treasury Secretaries and other important economic (inaudible). And so I was delighted when the President hosted a White House Conference on the New Economy in April and I urged him to invite people who knew about and represented microcredit.

And because I had also urged him to see some microcredit projects on his recent trip to India, he was able to speak with great authority about the women he had met. So of course in addition to inviting the powerful government and business leaders like Alan Greenspan and Bill Gates, the President invited others as well.

And I have to say that the person who stole the show was Marai Chatterjee from the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) of India. Marai talked eloquently about what poor people ­ particularly
poor women ­ need to close the economic divide : Technology and health care, education, credit, capital, employment, self-empowerment. The words just filled the East Room of the White House. Because that is what microcredit does.

I knew that because six years ago, I had gone with Ela Bhatt to visit SEWA and to meet with hundreds of women, some of whom had walked for 12 or 14 hours, to come and see Ela and me and talk about what microcredit had met in there lives. We went into that small room where the books are kept ­ the great big books where the loans and deposits are recorded. And, woman after woman told me stories ­ stories I had heard similarly from Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan and Morocco to Nicaragua and my own country. About how microcredit had changed a woman's life; how she could finally afford to support her own family; send a child to school; stand up to a husband or a mother-in-law; how she finally felt worth something in the eyes of equals around her.

And when our meeting ended, this incredible, beautiful sea of some of the most elegant women I have ever seen anywhere, dressed in pink, red and purple saris, began singing to the tune of « We Shall Overcome. » An inspirational message that traveled from the fields of American slavery to Ghandi's India back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggles and finally back to India once again.

That is the message we have to carry with us into the future.

You know, we have marked the year of the woman. We even marked the decade of the woman. Now let us not just mark but celebrate a new century in which women's rights are once and for all treated as human rights, fully respected and protected in every corner of the world.

In this new century, let women's voices be heard at the ballot box and on the soapbox, in government and business, in communities and families.

In this new century, let rape no longer be a weapon of war, and let no woman or girl ever again be sold into slavery or subjected to violence simply because of her sex.

In this new century, let women finally receive equal pay for equal work. And let us provide the childcare, health care, and family leave policies that parents need to succeed both at home and at work.

Let's give every woman a chance to shape her own economic destiny, and the means to lift herself and her children out of poverty.

Let's ensure that access to education and health care, credit and jobs is no longer dependent upon the color of our skin, the community we live in, or whether we are born a boy or a girl.

And in this new century, if we can achieve our goal of ensuring that women rights are accepted and protected ­ then I believe all children, boys and girls, will finally have the chance to reach their God-given potential.

Our work may be far from done but we cannot afford the luxury of being discouraged by these remaining challenges. We are the heirs of struggles across the globe and back through history of women and men who have fought for, lived for, and even died for the rights we enjoy today.

It's a struggle that actually in the modern era began 152 years ago, not far from here in a place called Seneca Falls, New York, where the very first women's rights convention was held. Imagine the courage it must have taken for those women to attend that convention. Think of a young woman named Charlotte Woodward, a 19 year-old glovemaker who worked long hours every day with no hope of keeping her wages or owning property. She decided to go to that convention. She set out early in the morning and she feared no one else would come. At first the road was completely empty, she reported. But at each of the crossroads, she saw more women appear in carriages and wagons and on foot. Gradually they formed one long procession on the road to equality.

We are still on that road. Only now, at every crossroads, our caravan is joined by women from every continent, of every religion, every race, every ethnicity, every age, every community.

And we know we may not see the end of this journey in our own lifetimes. Those who traveled to Seneca Falls understood that their convention was only a first step. They knew they wouldn't live to see the dreams they held, but they hoped their daughters and granddaughters would. In fact, only Charlotte Woodward, the 19-year-old glovemaker, lived long enough to see American women finally earn the right to vote

I was thinking about that last night as my mother celebrated her 81st birthday and how she was born before American women had the right to vote. What a gift that Charlotte, her sisters, and a few brave men gave us back in those many years in Seneca Falls. What a gift that all of the women who gathered all those years at UN Conferences have given us ­ in Mexico City, Copenhagen, Nairobi and in Beijing.

You have given us the road map to follow that road to equality. It is up to us to have the courage, the determination, the commitment to the mission of walking as far as we are able down that road and then passing off the road map to the generation behind us.

It is up to us and we can redeem the promises of Beijing ­ for our daughters and granddaughters ­ if we are committed to making this journey together. I believe we will and I'm grateful for what every one of us is doing. Thank you all very much.

(34) Zie Actiepunt 16 van de « World declaration on the survival, protection and development of children » : « Economic conditions will continue to influence greatly the fate of children, especially in developing nations. For the sake of the future of all children, it is urgently necessary to ensure or reactivate sustained and sustainable economic growth and development in all countries and also to continue to give urgent attention to an early, broad and durable solution to the external debt problems facing developing debtor counties. »

(38) Report of the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women : Equality, Development and Peace, Nairobi, 15-26 July 1985 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.85.IV.10), chap. I, sect. A.

(49) See United Nations Environment Programme, Convention on Biological Diversity (Environmental Law and Institute Programme Activity Centre), June 1992.

(50) Unsafe abortion is defined as a procedure for terminating an unwanted pregnancy either by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment lacking the minimal medical standards or both (based on World Health Organization, The Prevention and Management of Unsafe Abortion, Report of a Technical Working Group, Geneva, April 1992 (WHO/MSM/92.5)).